The baseball feud involving the Windy City has once again veered off course, this time to the Vatican, and Pope Leo XIV is not one to shy away from a little gentle ribbing. The new pope, a Chicago native and unabashed fan of the White Sox, could not refrain on this occasion from a little light-hearted raillery at the expense of the Chicago Cubs, who have been eliminated from the post-season games.

On Wednesday the pope waved to the visitors at the Vatican, when a voice in the audience cried out: “Go Cubs!” Without blinking, the pope turned and said in Spanish: “Han perdido,” and then changing to English he added: “They lost!” The audience laughed, but there was an element of pain, possibly, in the hearts of the fans of the Cubs.

The Cubs had a nice season this year, winning 92 games, the best showing of the team since 1918. But that was of no interest to Leo, whose White Sox won but 60 games and landed at the bottom of the American League Central. But aside from the game records, there is a great deal of loyalty involved, and Leo was not going to be overlooked in that way.

A Papal South Side Allegiance

The Pope seen in Game 1 of the 2005 World Series between the Astros and the White Sox.

Ever since Robert Francis Prevost was elected pope last May, the baseball fans have been conjecturing about his allegiance. The Cubs jumped in immediately and claimed him on the social media announcing that he was theirs. But the sentiments changed when his brother, John Prevost, in an interview with NBC Chicago, said: “It is Sox.”

It was not many minutes until the video evidence began to appear that Leo attended the 2005 world series games and watched the White Sox mix it up with the Houston Astros. Then this last June, during a public appearance in Rome, the pontiff was doubly emphatic to show just what team he preferred, donning the white garments that are characteristic of him and also a white cap of the White Sox.

A little bit of Rivalry from Vatican City

While the usual papal utterances are of a religious or diplomatic nature, this Cubs xab has all the charm that is associated with the South Side. It is not every day that a pope makes a remark about Major League Baseball and heaped ignorance on the subject with a smile, but such is the characteristic of the present pope that places him in such a different class from the previous popes. He leads the Catholic Church, but he communicates in all respects that he is only one of the multitude, for he talks baseball as though he was in line for an Italian beef at 35th Street.

And Cubs fans who are still licking the wounds of their departure from the playoffs will find food for thought in the fact that the loyalty to the game of baseball does not die, not even though one wears the ring on the finger of the pope.