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.

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.