New Hope for Pope's Hometown of Dolton?

New hope for pope’s hometown of Dolton? – Chicago Sun-Times

Longtime resident Anthony Sheldon has witnessed Dolton’s changes over the years, as businesses shuttered, property taxes skyrocketed and politicians siphoned cash from the taxpayers to their own pockets. Dolton had lost brick-making, metal parts, steel, aluminum and container factories, in addition to the steel mills in surrounding towns that employed tens of thousands of people. Newcomers like Sheldon’s family inherited this decline without new…

New hope for pope's hometown of Dolton?

When a young Robert Francis Prevost set off in the early 1980s for Rome to take his vows as a priest, his hometown of Dolton was on the precipice of fundamental changes.As the future Pope Leo XIV was being ordained and earning a doctorate in church law, the steel mills in Chicago were closing, instigating the decline of Dolton and its neighbors. Good-paying jobs disappeared. Household income fell. Waves of white families left, and Black families…

Pope Leo XIV’s election gives new hope to Dolton, Ill., and the church that formed him

"This right here is bringing us peace. We're having prayer. People are coming by having prayer. The community is talking."