History-marking cardinal has Glenview roots at Our Lady of Perpetual Help

It's a local-boy-makes-good story to rival any.

On Sunday, Pope Francis appointed Washington, D.C., Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory to the College of Cardinals in the Catholic Church.

Among 13 new cardinals, Gregory, 72, will be the first Black prelate from the United States to earn that position in a Nov. 28 ceremony.

This caused excitement throughout the Archdiocese of Chicago and, specifically, Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Glenview, where Gregory served as an associate pastor from 1973 until 1976.

"He just had a drive about him and a great personality," said the Rev. Jeremiah Boland, OLPH pastor.

"He worked very hard and he was very well-received by everybody, which is why he rose through the ranks of the church. It says a lot 48 years later that, at every Mass I announced that Wilton had been named a cardinal, people broke out in applause," said Boland, known as "Father Jerry."

"It's a huge thing," said Terry Luc, OLPH Church director of communications. "So many parishioners still remember him, he had such a connection with so many people here. He had a big impact when he came here."

Gregory's ascent was an improbable one, Boland recalled.

Although Ethel and Wilton Gregory Sr. were Baptists, they sent their son to the Catholic St. Carthage Grammar School primarily for the education, Boland said.

Born in tough Englewood on Chicago's South Side, young Wilton had yet to be baptized, yet in sixth grade he declared his intention to become a priest.

"He was off to the races after that," Boland said.

After theological studies at Chicago's Roman Catholic Quigley South High School, Niles College of Loyola University and Mundelein Seminary, in 1973 Cardinal John Cody ordained Gregory as a priest in Chicago.

Assigned to OLPH in predominantly white Glenview, "he was quite a bridge-builder," Boland said.

"People just fell in love with him and he fell in love with the parish. It was a great experience. He made lifelong friends. Many of his friends, he still relates to them in Glenview," the pastor said.

The younger Boland didn't serve alongside Gregory at OLPH but has since enjoyed a professional relationship with him.

Gregory left OLPH to study at the Pontifical University of Sant'Anselmo in Rome then returned to teach liturgy at Mundelein Seminary, where Boland was a student in Gregory's first class. Later, as a priest, Boland worked with Gregory placing other priests throughout their jurisdiction.

Boland's late mother, Eileen, lived across the hall from Gregory's late mother, Ethel, in a senior residence in Palos Park.

"In heaven today, Wilton's mother, Ethel, has to be dancing with joy," Boland said in a YouTube video interview with Luc.

Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, added his joy in a Chicago Archdiocese release on Sunday.

"While we take particular pride in this recognition of a dedicated priest, whom we are proud to claim as our own, we are also moved that Pope Francis chose this compassionate, thoughtful pastor when our nation and the world are in desperate need of healing and courageous leadership," Cupich stated.

Gregory displayed those traits at each stop after his 1994 ordainment as bishop of the Archdiocese of Belleville, Illinois, at age 35, the minimum age for a bishop and then the youngest in the nation, Boland said.

Social justice was firmly in his sights, within and outside of the church - in Belleville and subsequently as archbishop of the dioceses in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., where he was installed by Pope Francis in 2019.

Archbishop Gregory not only decried sexual abuse allegations in the clergy but helped shape policy against it, Boland said.

"He didn't shy away from doing what we need to do," he said.

The Associated Press cited his "inclusive treatment" of LGBTQ Catholics. The Washington Post, addressing a Georgetown University panel discussion on racism Gregory sat on, noted him drawing a parallel between the death of George Floyd and "when I was taken to the viewing of Emmett Till."

Among Gregory's many appointments and honors, including nine honorary doctoral degrees, was his 2006 induction into the Martin Luther King Board of Preachers at Morehouse College. That same year the Catholic Common Ground Initiative gave him the Cardinal Bernardin Award.

Boland said Pope Francis will "benefit greatly" by a Cardinal Gregory.

"He's really recognized as a very significant bishop in the United States. And to think that our parish here in Glenview plays such an important role in his formation as a priest," Boland said.

"It's a pretty improbable story," he said, "that a sixth-grade convert would eventually become a cardinal archbishop in the Roman Catholic Church and one of the leading voices in the country. It's really a fantastic story."

• The Associated Press contributed to this report.