Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will travel later this month to meet Pope Leo XIV, a trip his office announced Wednesday that comes as the mayor leans on the city’s most famous religious figure in a public show of shared values.
Johnson is expected to leave May 26 with some senior staffers for Rome, Italy and Vatican City. World Business Chicago will fund and lead the trip, according to the mayor’s office.
The visit gives Johnson a chance to sit down with the Chicago-born pope just weeks after Leo marked his one-year anniversary as pontiff of the worldwide Catholic church. It also lands one day after Johnson officially marks three years in office on May 15, making the trip both a diplomatic stop and a political marker for a mayor nearing the halfway point of his term.
Johnson said he believes he and the pope share values on protecting voting rights, immigrant rights and workers’ rights, calling Leo “very clear and consistent” on those issues. He said he is “just elated” that the pope is from Chicago and said he looks forward to talking with him about standing up for “our humanity” as cities contend with pressure from the federal government.
The mayor framed the trip as part of a broader moment for cities, saying it is a “unique time to lead” while the federal government is attacking American cities across the country. He added that he wants to thank Leo for what he described as the pope’s support for that cause.
The Vatican meeting follows a visit last month by an Illinois Mayors Public Diplomacy Mission, which traveled to Rome to meet the Chicago-born pope. Johnson’s trip now places the city’s mayor directly in the orbit of that same Vatican outreach, with the added weight of a personal meeting between two public figures from the same city.
But the timing also exposes the gap between symbolism and governance. Johnson will be abroad while Chicago prepares for the next stretch of his term, and he said plainly that his attention remains on the job in front of him. He said he has “not thought about” his political future, that there is still one year left in his term, and that his focus has to stay there.
He also pushed back against talk about where he goes next, saying the same people now speculating about politics once believed his election would fracture the city, and that has not happened. For now, the trip offers Johnson a high-profile meeting with Pope Leo XIV and a chance to cast Chicago as a city with influence well beyond City Hall.
What comes next is simple: Johnson heads to Rome at the end of the month, and whatever comes out of that meeting will say as much about his political message at home as it does about his audience at the Vatican.
