Keeping the degrees of separation close to the new pope
Some statisticians claim that each of us is no more than six degrees of separation from any other person on the planet. With that as a rough measure, Chicagoans were cheered to learn last week that their distance from probably the best-known religious leader in the world was at least a step or two closer than that of almost everyone else.
And, for a brief few minutes, the separation between our Jake Griffin and Pope Leo XIV was just one person and less than a mile.
Standing on the front porch of John Prevost’s home in New Lenox, Griffin could hear notifications coming non-stop on Prevost’s cellphone, with the house phone on the other side of the door repeatedly beeping to voicemail.
“It’s going to be like this all day, isn’t it?” Prevost groaned pleasantly as he invited Griffin inside.
“It’s going to be like this all week,” Griffin responded.
Then he plunged into the interview that would be one of the first in the Chicago area, indeed in the world, with a Chicagoan who was literally no degrees of separation from Robert Prevost, heretofore to be known as Pope Leo XIV.
Griffin got a head start on the competition for John Prevost’s attention as he and Editor Lisa Miner discussed it as the news broke Wednesday morning that the new pope hailed from Chicago. Not only did they discover Prevost, but Griffin found that he lived less than a mile away. He broke away from the call, rushed to his car and sped to the pope’s brother’s home.
Big stories are nothing new to Griffin, nor to most of our staff, but it’s always invigorating to see how such events still stir a reporter’s blood. Indeed, they infect the entire newsroom, as Miner would observe in an email to the staff on Thursday recognizing their efforts to bring one of the biggest Chicago news stories of the year home to suburban readers.
“Right away, Chuck Keeshan jumped into action to make this international story our own,” she wrote. “He deployed Chris Placek to Holy Name Cathedral for a press conference and story that shared the shock and excitement of Chicago Catholics. Katlyn Smith offered to help, gathering reaction and writing her own story when the Cubs vs. Sox rivalry had both teams claiming the new pope was a fan. And when we discovered the pope's brother lived in New Lenox near Jake, he headed over to John Prevost's home, was invited in and got the first interview he granted that day … The copy desk was also key in the effort with Bob (Beamesderfer) pulling and editing wire and Brian (Shamie) creating a gorgeous front page that captured both the international appeal and the deep local connections.”
She noted also the help of other specific reporters and photographers, including staff writer Russell Lissau, photography director Paul Valade, assistant city editor Madhu Krishnamurthy and even Sports Editor Orrin Schwarz, and she cited what those of us with long experience in newsrooms know — that practically every person on the staff was involved in some way with assuring that on a historic day, the Daily Herald would reflect the grandeur of the moment without overlooking the routine local news of the day that readers also want and need to know.
“Chicago falls in love,” declared the lead headline of the Daily Herald on Saturday, Oct. 6, 1979, perhaps the last time Chicago had come so close to the physical presence of the pope when the 37-hour visit of John Paul II to the city galvanized the city.
A day earlier, reporter John Lampinen — now the retired editor of the paper — had chronicled the excitement that gripped the region: “I touched him. I touched him. Oh, I had a chance and I touched him,” Lampinen quoted Brother Fabian Gagnoi, who, Lampinen wrote, “literally danced on the sidewalk outside St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Chicago.”
Forty-six years later, few of us can yet say we had a chance to physically touch the Catholic Church’s 267th pontiff. But we do all revel in how close we may be to people and places he knew, frequented and enjoyed. And, who knows, with a South Sider now ensconced in the Vatican, there may yet be a chance for Chicago to fully fall in love again.
If it happens, our reporters, editors and photographers will be ready and eager to keep the separation close and historic for suburban readers.
• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His new book “Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.