Ellen Skerrett: How much did Pope Leo know about his mother’s life ?

That quintessential child’s question, “Where did I come from?” takes on deeper meaning on Mother’s Day when families gather to celebrate the women in their lives. I’ve often wondered, though, how much Pope Leo XIV and his brothers really knew about their mother’s life when they were growing up. What memories, if any, does Robert Prevost have of his mother organizing a free polio vaccine clinic in August 1962 at St. Mary’s church in Chicago’s Riverdale neighborhood?

As local newspapers make clear, Mildred Martinez Prevost took seriously the need for children to be inoculated, and she coordinated public health outreach as president of the Altar and Rosary Society. Chicago Board of Health doctors administered more than 1,000 inoculations on July 24, 1962, but Mildred Prevost lamented that so many mothers with small children were unable to get their shots at the clinic when supplies ran out.  Her response? To open a second evening clinic held eight days later — after fathers had returned home from work.

When Robert Prevost was born in 1955, Mass was still celebrated in Latin and Catholic children laughed at the joke, “What’s the pope’s phone number? Et cum spiritu tuo.” The Prevost brothers knew by heart their address in Dolton, 212 E. 41st Place, and their number, Vincennes 9-2495. But when their telephone rang around Mother’s Day 1963, did they understand it was because their parents were involved in securing food for local residents whose relief checks were delayed? Mildred and Louis Prevost were part of St. Mary’s Christian Family Movement and made their home available as a place where neighbors could drop off baby food and cash donations for much needed fresh meat.

During Robert Prevost’s freshman year at Villanova University in 1973, Mildred Prevost was busy performing in St. Mary’s ambitious “Off Broadway” productions. He might have laughed at the irony that his real-life librarian mother was one of the Pickalittle ladies who schemed against Marian Paroo in the “The Music Man.” Perhaps his father, Louis, mailed him the photo of “Millie” Prevost wearing an elaborate hat that was published in the local newspaper. Or the article announcing that his 62-year-old mother would sing the theme from “Moulin Rouge” — in French — for hundreds of men and women who bought tickets to St. Mary’s “Holidaze ’74.”  But Pope Leo’s mother had found her voice decades before she shared her talents in parish musicals.

Choral programs at Mundelein College help to fill in the blanks. There is no question that Mildred Martinez’s musical talent was nurtured by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Holy Name Cathedral School, The Immaculata on Irving Park Road and Mundelein College. During the International Eucharistic Congress of 1926, the pope’s mother had a front-row seat to history. She saw up close cardinals and bishops and priests from throughout the world filling up the pews of the church where she was baptized and made her First Holy Communion. And on June 21, 1926, she joined with 60,000 students to sing the Mass of the Angels in Soldier Field, described by Tribune reporter James O’Donnell Bennett as a “cathedral of all outdoors.”

Despite the stock market crash of 1929, the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary completed their art deco skyscraper on Sheridan Road in 1931, and it became a sanctuary of sorts for the pope’s mother. Although she could only afford tuition for the 1939-40 school year, Mildred Martinez nevertheless was a valued member of the Mundelein Glee Club from 1935 until 1943. She was, after all, a “BVM” girl with talent. And archivists Emily Reiher and Laura Berfield at the Women and Leadership Archives of Loyola University Chicago have the proof.

Among the rare images carefully preserved in the Mundelein College Collection is the Sept. 24, 1936, Glee Club photo of Mildred Martinez with her colleagues and organist professor Walter Flandorf. Although the BVM Sisters who headed the music department were never photographed, they made sure their students were recognized. Mildred Martinez’s name appears on program after program, with solos ranging from Claude Debussy’s “The Blessed Damozel” to George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” described in the student newspaper as “the Grofe-Flandorf arrangement of Creole Days.” Music mattered, especially as the Depression cast its long shadow on the lives and aspirations of young women like Mildred Martinez who cared for her widowed mother.

Few of us really understand much about our mother’s lives, but thanks to the work of librarians and archivists, we know what Pope Leo’s mother looked like 10 years before she became “Mrs. Louis Prevost.” Now if only a recording existed of the Nov. 26, 1939, fall concert, we could hear her voice!

Ellen Skerrett, a Chicago historian, is writing a history of Saint Ignatius College Prep.

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