Chicago, epicenter of modern Catholic Social Teaching
Rev. Jim Ryan, Ph.D.
Pope Leo XIV’s Chicago pedigree is well known and well established. He was born in Bronzeville on the South Side, not far from Hyde Park where he would attend and graduate from Catholic Theological Union (CTU) in 1982. His family moved to Dolton, Illinois where he grew up. Dolton is a twenty minute drive from Bronzeville. He taught physics at St. Rita High School, run by the Augustinian Order, of which he was a member, on Chicago’s southwest side. Following his graduation from CTU, and soon after his ordination to the priesthood in Rome, he began his studies for a doctorate in Canon Law which he received in 1987.
Pope Leo’s Windy City beginning was the launch that eventually placed him in ministry outside the United States to Peru and to the Vatican. In truth, most of his post-ordination years were comprised of training to be and to live in places across the world until he was made the ultimate global citizen by his election to be Pope on May 8, 2025 – a life grounded in Chicago and now shared with the world.
Taking a closer look at his theological formation in Chicago, and being a fellow alum of CTU myself (1974), it’s my belief that a significant portion of his studies would have focused on the contribution that leaders of the Roman Catholic Church provided toward a ministry of compassion and ethical guidance. The 1970s and early 1980s was a time of engagement, politically, socially, and economically on the part of the American Catholic Bishops through their organization, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Social Teaching through pastoral letters, for example, on peace and on the economy provided a high profile to American society on what the Roman Catholic mission is called to be. Regional bishops, too, injected themselves into the socio-economic conditions of the time. For example, the Appalachian bishops wrote in 1975, “This Land Is Home to Me,” and in 1980 the midwestern bishops wrote, “Strangers and Guests: Toward Community in the Heartland.” Others covered racism, the role of the modern economy, and – more recently – immigration.
One man, in particular, stood out in the 1980s as a model of episcopal leadership. He was Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. In 1980, while heading the Cincinnati archdiocese, Bernardin was appointed to head up a Committee of Bishops that would explore the issues of peace, just war theory, modern warfare – especially nuclear weapons, and nonviolence. The NCCB was interested in announcing a Call to Action on these areas of social teaching. The letter, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response,” was issued in 1983 – one year following the Augustinian Bob Prevost’s ordination. It was also one year after Joseph Bernardin was appointed to become the new archbishop of Chicago.
Bernardin was joyfully welcomed to replace the unpopular Cardinal John Cody. As a seminarian Bob Prevost, OSA may not have been aware that less than a decade before his graduation Cardinal Cody took to referring to CTU as that “G-D hippie seminary on the South Side.” CTU’s inaugural year in Hyde Park was 1968, the year of the Chicago Democratic Convention with its convergence of anti-war and pro-peace demonstrators. Those first CTU students joined in the actions outside the International Amphitheatre and in Grant Park. Cardinal Cody was not shy about expressing his views about hippie seminarians. Nor was it ever clearer that CTU’s mission of training ministers to address the issues of the contemporary world was validated.
Joseph Bernardin was appointed to Chicago in July 1982 (one month following Robert Prevost’s ordination.) In 1983 two events marked the new archbishop’s understanding not only of his ministry but also that of the entire church. In May the result of the bishops’ committee, led by Bernardin, became the document, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.” The bishops approved the pastoral letter’s publication by a voice vote of 238-9. Then, on December 6, 1983 at Fordham University as he delivered the Gannon Lecture, the newly elevated Cardinal Bernardin used the term “seamless garment” to describe Catholic Social Teaching’s clothing of life issues with a “consistent ethic of life.” In short, this teaching – when applied to how life is to be lived, protected, valued, and glorified as the Creator’s gift to each person – is meant to focus on more than one issue. Rather, a consistent ethic spreads its view and challenges across the entire spectrum of the human condition
While Bernardin became known as a prominent proponent of the “seamless garment,” he was not the first one to use the term. In 1971 it was the peace activist and journalist, Eileen Egan, who first used the phrase when speaking about and referencing a holistic reverence for life. She wrote, “The protection of life is a seamless garment. You can’t protect some life and not others.” In the Gannon Lecture, Bernardin referred to the seamless garment as a protective cover for life from conception to death. He connected anti-abortion with opposition to war, poverty, and capital punishment, among other life issues.
Pope Francis, in his time, saw his ministry as one of expanding social teaching, especially when, in his Encyclical Letter, “Laudato si, mi Signore” (Praise be to you, my Lord), he focused all life issues on the survival and care for earth; as he put it “our common home.”
The leadership of Chicago in proclaiming modern Catholic Social Teaching continued in 2017 when Cardinal Blase Cupich gave a presentation at the University of Chicago. At a conference convened under the title, “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life – Capstone Conference,” Cupich made a contribution. He titled it, “A Consistent Ethic of Solidarity: Transcending Self, Transforming the World.” In it he embroidered the seamless garment with the virtue of solidarity – another bedrock element of social teaching. It is a virtuous act to realize solidarity in the building up of the common good. Cardinal Cupich not only honored the memory of his Chicago predecessor, he demonstrated the bond between the personal and the social. In September 2023 this bond was restated at the 40th anniversary commemoration of Bernardin’s original Gannon Lecture. Cardinal Cupich returned to Fordham to deliver his address, “An Integral Ethic of Solidarity.” It was billed as “Cardinal Blase Cupich on the enduring legacy of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.”
Now Pope Leo XIV returns to his Chicago roots as he both continues the legacy of his mentor, Pope Francis, and also teaches in the vein of both Chi-town prelates Bernardin and Cupich. Leo recently said that if a person will not stand with the immigrant and the stranger then that person could hardly identify as pro-life. Make no mistake, this Pope enters fraught waters within his own church. Groups like, Pax Orbis, a fundamentalist group which claims the legacy of the message of Fatima, has no truck with notions of an embroidered seamless garment that metaphorically demonstrates the holistic nature of Catholic social teaching. This organization will, no doubt, stand in the way of Pope Leo in his wider embrace of what pro-life actually means. But, Chicago is a tough place – so its native son, Robert Prevost, aka Pope Leo XIV, will, no doubt, teach as Cardinal Cupich does, that consistency in an ethical life transcends the self and transforms the world.
May 2, 2026
