That quintessential child\u2019s question, \u201cWhere did I come from?\u201d takes on deeper meaning on Mother\u2019s Day when families gather to celebrate the women in their lives. I\u2019ve often wondered, though, how much Pope Leo XIV and his brothers really knew about their mother\u2019s 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\u2019s church in Chicago\u2019s Riverdale neighborhood?\n<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Her response? To open a second evening clinic held eight days later \u2014 after fathers had returned home from work.\n<\/p>\n
When Robert Prevost was born in 1955, Mass was still celebrated in Latin and Catholic children laughed at the joke, \u201cWhat\u2019s the pope\u2019s phone number? Et cum spiritu tuo.\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\n<\/p>\n
During Robert Prevost\u2019s freshman year at Villanova University in 1973, Mildred Prevost was busy performing in St. Mary\u2019s ambitious \u201cOff Broadway\u201d 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 \u201cThe Music Man.\u201d Perhaps his father, Louis, mailed him the photo of \u201cMillie\u201d 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 \u201cMoulin Rouge\u201d \u2014 in French \u2014 for hundreds of men and women who bought tickets to St. Mary\u2019s \u201cHolidaze \u201974.\u201d\u00a0 But Pope Leo\u2019s mother had found her voice decades before she shared her talents in parish musicals.\n<\/p>\n
Choral programs at Mundelein College help to fill in the blanks. There is no question that Mildred Martinez\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019Donnell Bennett as a \u201ccathedral of all outdoors.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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 \u201cBVM\u201d girl with talent. And archivists Emily Reiher and Laura Berfield at the Women and Leadership Archives of Loyola University Chicago have the proof.\n<\/p>\n
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\u2019s name appears on program after program, with solos ranging from Claude Debussy\u2019s \u201cThe Blessed Damozel\u201d to George Gershwin\u2019s \u201cSummertime,\u201d described in the student newspaper as \u201cthe Grofe-Flandorf arrangement of Creole Days.\u201d 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.\n<\/p>\n
Few of us really understand much about our mother\u2019s lives, but thanks to the work of librarians and archivists, we know what Pope Leo\u2019s mother looked like 10 years before she became \u201cMrs. Louis Prevost.\u201d Now if only a recording existed of the Nov. 26, 1939, fall concert, we could hear her voice!<\/p>\n
Ellen Skerrett, a Chicago historian, is writing a history of Saint Ignatius College Prep.<\/p>\n
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here<\/a> or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That quintessential child\u2019s question, \u201cWhere did I come from?\u201d takes on deeper meaning on Mother\u2019s Day when families…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":786288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,321462,3417,319193,321463],"class_list":{"0":"post-786287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois","11":"tag-mildred-martinez-prevost","12":"tag-pope-leo-xiv","13":"tag-robert-prevost","14":"tag-sisters-of-charity-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}