When Cardinal Robert Prevost of south suburban Dolton became Pope Leo XIV in May, excited Chicagoans could hardly believe the first American pope in church history was homegrown — and a White Sox fan at that.

Conservative Catholics across the country could hardly believe it, either. The powerful Catholic right had campaigned for a traditionalist who would break from the late Pope Francis. Instead, they got a centrist with deep roots in Latin America whom Laura Loomer, among other conservative firebrands, instantly denounced as a “woke, Marxist pope.”

Now President Donald Trump’s administration is taking aim at Pope Leo’s hometown, pledging to use federal forces to clear Chicago of its heavily Hispanic undocumented.

Tens of thousands of those migrants are devout Catholics. Among foreign-

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