The Catholic church electing its first American pope made it inevitable thatwe would be dissecting his sports fandom. However, there was some confusion when it came to Pope Leo XIV. Leo, formerly known as Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, became one of the world's most famous Chicago natives on Thursday with his elevation to the papacy. Born in Chicago's Mercy Hospital and raised in nearby Dolton, he is the first pope to hail from the U.S. A Chicago native would naturally be expected to be a fan of the local teams, but that gets tricky when the city has two MLB clubs. Given that he served as an altar boy at a church on the city's South Side, it was initially thought that Pope Leo would be a fan of the Chicago White Sox, but then ABC News complicated things byreporting that he is actually the rare South Side Cubs fan. Let's just say the Cubs ran with that. Congratulations to Pope Leo XIV!pic.twitter.com/s02yDDegQd — Chicago Cubs (@Cubs)May 8, 2025 However, less than an hour later, Leo's brother offered some conflicting information to Chicago's WGN News (video above): "He was never, ever a Cubs fan, so I don't know where that came from. He was always a Sox fan. Our mother was a Cubs fan. I don't know, maybe that clued in there, and our dad was a Cardinals fan, so I don't know where that all came from. And all the aunts in our mom's family were from North Side, so that's why they were Cubs fans." While a South Side Cubs fan would have been odd, a Cubs fan and a Cardinals fan raising a White Sox fan sounds like it will have its own backstory. What's more, the Chicago Sun-Times later found a picture of the new pope at the 2005 World Series, in which the White Sox defeated the Houston Astros for their first title in 88 years. The Chicago Sun-Times found a photo of Pope Leo, Robert Prevost, at the 2005 World Series against the Astrospic.twitter.com/oNcqpRC5Ry — Michael Schwab (@michaelschwab13)May 9, 2025 Naturally, the White Sox moved quickly to claim the kind of victory that has been rare for them over the past few years. Well, would you look at that... Congratulations to Chicago's own Pope Leo XIVpic.twitter.com/U5DJ7TOyDr — Chicago White Sox (@whitesox)May 8, 2025 Leo also got a thumbs-up from former White Sox All-Star and current Fox broadcaster A.J. Pierzynski. Congrats to Pope Leo XIVAlways knew a#whitesoxfan would rise to the challenge!!#SouthSide@drprevost — A.J. Pierzynski (@ajpierzynski12)May 8, 2025 So, to summarize, an MLB team just claimed the pope as its fan when he is, in fact, a supporter of their crosstown rival, which is a sentence we didn't see ourselves publishing when the day began. But it's no big deal. It's not like the Cubs have ever had to worry about a curse or anything.