Let's drink to the hardworking people. Raise your glass to the salt of the earth.
Founded in 1846, Old St. Patrick's Church is one of a handful of structures remaining in the city that predate the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, and is the city's oldest standing building.The first Catholic presence in present-day Illinois was that of a French Jesuit missionary, Reverend Jacques Marquette, who landed at the mouth of the Chicago River on December 4, 1674. A cabin he built for the winter became the first European settlement in the area. Marquette published his survey of the new territories and soon more French missionaries and settlers arrived.
In the 1920s half the population of Chicago was Catholic from every European nation. And Chicago has always been proudly known as maybe the most salt of the earth of all American cities. Rough. Tough. Hard working. Proud. All American.
In 1914 Carl Sandburg wrote as tribute the Immortal poem "Chicago"....I'll quote a few lines:
Chicago by Carl Sandburg
Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders;...
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities; Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
On May 8,2025 a Catholic from the a 350 year line of Catholic Chicagoans was elected the First American Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
Chicagoans were so justifiably proud. I'm sure that there was cheering throughout the city. Glasses were raised by these hard working people. There was talk about Chicago pizza and the Cubs.
I'm very confident most waited joyfully for their local boy to hit the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica and give them their shout out, after all he was their hometown boy and the FIRST...THE VERY FIRST AMERICAN POPE. Who wouldn't expect the First American to acknowledge this historic moment?
Did the newly elected Pope speak to Chicago, or America? No he never said a word in English. He never acknowledged the place of his birth at all.
And to add insult to injury he actually gave a shout out to the place where he was Bishop TWO YEARS AGO in Peru. He spoke in Spanish and acknowledged his love for Peru.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, they say, and he made his impression.
I felt so sad and sorry for the salt of the earth Chicagoans who still wanted to pretend that he cared for, or even identified with them, home and country.
You see it isn't really PC to be American. It isn't PC to be a colonizer. You have to identify with the oppressed, although Americans have given BILLIONS to the Catholic Church both voluntarily building up America over her history, and involuntarily through grants to bring in illegals in order to tear her down.
But, the hard working people of Chicago were never colonizers, were they?
No, they were always the salt of the earth that get disrespected and pushed aside by the more fortunate. Some call them a "basket of deplorables." And some have, in so many words said, 'I'm not one of you, I'm a Peruvian.'
Imagine thinking that the salt of the earth in Peru are somehow more desirable than the salt of the earth in Chicago. Are there no marginalized in your home city? Do the sheep smell different in Peru than in Chicago?
Well I lift my glass to the hard working people of Chicago and across all of the United States, who gave their all to build what was once a great country.
And I hope everyone remembers this. It was a truly terrible thing to do. It was done intentionally and with complete foresight. The newly elected pope wrote a four page speech ahead of its delivery. He never spoke English. He never acknowledged the country of his birth, but some foreign country, although it was an historic moment, and he never gave a shout out to the salt of the earth in Chicago.
youtube.com/watch?v=eOiLH-2hTPQ
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