Supper with the pope: Wheaton restaurant hosted the future pontiff

A Wheaton chapel-turned-restaurant — its stained glass windows still in place — may have been the perfect backdrop for the private audience a group of theologians had with the man who would become Pope Leo XIV.

The dinner with then-Cardinal Robert Prevost took place last August at Ivy Restaurant, when the Chicago native was in town to visit relatives and celebrate Mass in South suburban New Lenox.

Michael Murphy, director of Loyola University Chicago’s Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage, helped organize the meeting with three other faculty members and Prevost. There wasn’t a particular rhyme or reason for choosing the West suburban locale, Murphy says, except that it was a good location in the middle for everyone.

“They were so nice at Ivy,” Murphy told the Daily Herald. “And they even asked, ‘Like, is this guy, you know, important? Yeah, he’s a cardinal, you know, of the church.’ But we didn’t know he was going to become pope.”

Murphy can say he now knows two popes — even if he only met Leo XIV’s predecessor on Zoom.

Pope Francis participated in four virtual conversations with university students from around the world in Loyola’s Building Bridges Initiative. Murphy helped organize the livestreamed discussions thanks to a connection with Emilce Cuda, an Argentine theologian and Vatican official who also teaches at Loyola’s outpost in Rome.

“As we were planning this in 2022, she kept getting promoted in the Vatican. She got one of the highest, most significant, influential roles for a Catholic woman ever in the Vatican,” said Murphy, in reference to Cuda’s title as secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. “We joked, ‘Oh hey, maybe you can invite your boss to our Zoom meeting. Ha, ha, ha.’ And she wrote back a week later and said, ‘The pope accepts.’”

In 2023, Francis called Prevost to Rome to be president of that commission.

When he returned to the Chicago suburbs last summer, Prevost wanted to meet with the Loyola professors to talk about expanding the program.

Murphy says he and his colleagues were sipping on wine and club sodas at Ivy’s outdoor bar on Hale Street that summer evening when Prevost arrived. He was by himself, in a simple black suit and white collar.

“So gentle. A smile, a good look at his eye. A true gentleman,” Murphy remembers. “We shook hands, got in and sat down and everything. And we just had a very affable conversation. Very learned. He’s a very humble person, but very smart. Mild mannered. Direct as a communicator, very warm, but not like, you know, garrulous. He’s just not really a chatterbox kind of guy. Just a genuinely true and good person.”

They agreed to meet again, maybe the next time Murphy planned to be in Rome, scheduled for June 2025.

“The last email from Emilce was, ‘O.K., let’s get something on the calendar,’” according to Murphy.

Then, Pope Francis died. And then, Pope Leo XIV was elected.

So the meeting in Rome now is in “limbo,” so to speak, Murphy said.

He says he’ll always be grateful for the time spent at the Wheaton restaurant. He also remains hopeful the Chicago native son returns home for a visit.

“It’s amazing. We’re just pinching ourselves here,” Murphy said. “And I hope, and I expect, I think, that he’ll come to Chicago as the Holy Father, and that’ll be amazing.”