Pope Francis’ health scare that’s left him hospitalized with double pneumonia for weeks has Catholics worldwide and in Chicago praying for the 88-year-old’s recovery, but also preparing for what might come next.
Among the men who will determine whether the Catholic church will continue in the direction of pastoral service for all modeled by Francis, the first pope from South America — or whether it will swing back to a conservative interpretation focusing on church authority — are three influential American bishops tied to Chicago.
Cardinal Blase Cupich, 75, was appointed archbishop of Chicago in 2014 by Francis and remains in the pope’s inner circle.
Chicago native Cardinal Robert Prevost, 69, has served as Francis’ powerful bishopmaker at the Vatican since 2023, after stints leading the Order of Augustine’s Midwest ministry from its Chicago office, and then the entire order from Rome. A week before Francis entered the hospital, he added Prevost to the small group of cardinals who choose from among themselves the highly influential dean who heads the selection of a new pope.
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago native who was chosen by Pope Francis in 2023 as essentially his “bishopmaker,” leading the recitation of the Holy Rosary for Pope Francis’ recovery in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Monday. Prevost is one of 137 special bishops able to vote to elect a new pope.
Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP
And Cardinal Wilton Gregory, 77, the socially progressive archbishop of Washington, D.C., until retiring in January, was born and raised in Englewood, starting in Chicago as a priest. Francis appointed him as the first-ever African American cardinal.
Until each man turns 80, he’ll be part of the group of special bishops known as the College of Cardinals, or papal conclave, who select a pope by an elaborate secret ballot process inside the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.
Currently, 137 cardinals are eligible to vote; 109 of them were appointed by Francis, who made a point to elevate bishops from underrepresented places and backgrounds and others who share his philosophy about church leadership to the posts. They sometimes are referred to as the “princes of the church.”
But Pope Francis says the cardinals “shouldn’t have the mentality of princes,” says the Rev. Stan Chu Ilo, an author of books about Pope Francis who teaches at DePaul University’s Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology.
“It’s not about power and privilege,” Chu says. “It’s about service.”
Ilo also was on a papal working group organized by a key Vatican office headed by Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian bishop of Czech parents who lived in Chicago during the 1970s while getting his doctorate at the University of Chicago.
“Cardinal Cupich adopts a pastoral approach, not a judgmental and rigorous, condemnatory approach,” Ilo says. “That’s why Pope Francis relies on his advice.”
Francis has tapped Cupich for key appointments — to help select bishops and as one of 48 hand-picked attendees of a global synod discussing the church’s future.
Gregory, baptized a Catholic when he was 11 while attending the now-closed St. Carthage elementary school, also was an important aide to two Chicago cardinals — John Cody and Francis George. He became a bishop at 36, at the time the nation’s youngest. Later tapped as a leader in the church’s response to the sex abuse scandal, he’s also known as a proponent of social justice, welcoming same-sex couples into the church, speaking in favor of racial justice and bolstering the church’s support for immigrants.
Shortly after his retirement in January, he gave a speech in Washington, D.C., apologizing “for my own failure to emulate Christ’s compassion” regarding gay Catholics, saying, “The way that we have treated our LGBTQ brothers and sisters has brought them tears and too many of us disgrace.”
Prevost, who got his master’s degree in divinity at the Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park, spent two decades in Peru as a missionary and bishop, leading a diocese there. He has been made a member of several Vatican commissions in addition to heading the one that screens prospective bishops, “indicating how much Pope Francis trusts him and values his administrative abilities,” as the College of Cardinals report notes.
“This is the guy who makes bishops,” Ilo says. “This is the guy who will say: This person should be raised to a higher rank. That means that the pope has the absolute confidence in his ability, his goodwill and his capacity to make judgments of character.”
Prevost’s name also has been floated among some Vatican-watchers — as well as online oddsmakers who are taking bets on who will be Francis’ successor — as a possible candidate for the papacy.
“Obviously, he’s well-respected,” says the Rev. Robin Ryan, a professor of systemic theology at the Catholic Theological Union. “And he hasn’t spent most of his time in the U.S. So, maybe if an American were to be elected, maybe it would be someone like that, who served in other countries and now serves in Rome.”
The selection in 2013 of Pope Francis, the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina, kicked open church doors to choosing popes from outside Europe. In the last 500 years, only the three most recent popes have come from anywhere but Italy.
As Europe and the rest of the Western world have seen the number of Catholics drop, the Catholic church has been growing in Africa, Asia and South America.
Chicago’s Catholic population remains the country’s third-largest, after Los Angeles and New York, but might wield more influence at the Vatican.
Archbishop José Gomez, the leader of Los Angeles’ archdiocese, hasn’t been elevated to cardinal, so he won’t be part of the voting and could not be chosen as pope.
New York’s leader, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, 75, who will be part of the conclave, is known for conservative views more in keeping with those of Pope Benedict XVI, who elevated him to cardinal in 2012.
Prevost and any of the Americans are seen as long shots to be chosen as Francis’ successor for one key reason: They’re from the United States.
“They’ve all given very good service to the church,” Ryan says. “But I just think it would be very difficult to elect an American cardinal, especially at this time, with the church and with the fraught nature of the politics and of the person in our country who resides in the White House. I just think it would politically, be politically impossible.”
Ryan points to the letter that Pope Francis sent to U.S. bishops a few weeks ago, calling the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy a “major crisis” and rejecting Vice President JD Vance’s interpretation of Catholic theology.
“I don’t think an American pope could do that,” Ryan says. “He would be accused of embroiling the papacy in U.S. politics.”
A pope must be a unifier, Ilo says.
“It reflects, I must tell you, that the United States episcopacy is quite divided,” he says. “It’s quite divided, I’m sorry to say that, and it reflects the division also in the wider society.
“The question is whether other cardinals from the United States will line up behind them, if the bishops themselves here are not united,” he says. “And this is the challenge.”
Cupich, through spokeswoman Paula Waters, declined to make any predictions.
“When it has been asked of him — in various forms, such as what are the chances of an American, Asian, African pope, he usually says, ‘All bets are off,’ and the next pontiff could come from anywhere,” Waters says.
