A Chicago-born cardinal walks into a conclave. The rest of the joke tells itself. In the breathless day since Pope Leo XIV’s election as the first American pontiff, the memes, doctored images and tongue-in-cheek references have piled up deeper than Chicago’s pizza and more loaded than its hot dog.

Across Chicago, Sunday churchgoers returned to pews still stunned and elated about the election of a native of the city’s South Side to the papacy.