The Internet’s Funniest Jokes About the Chicago Pope

The new Pope was announced at the Vatican on Thursday as Robert Prevost, a Chicago-born missionary who will be the first American pope in the Catholic Church’s history. The 69-year-old Prevost will take the name Leo XIV, and the internet at large responded with basically two types of reactions: 1) the far-right conservatives who whined that Leo was a “woke Marxist,” and 2) all the other normal people who were just making jokes about the Pope being from Chicago.

Pope Leo has been on Twitter since 2011 and has a history of tweets that are now being dissected by online sleuths and political operatives to determine if he’s a Good Pope or a Bad Pope. And while trying to map a Catholic leader’s politics to fit an American understanding of the political landscape is silly on many levels, that hasn’t stopped people from trying, especially since Leo has tweeted criticism of Vice President JD Vance’s views on Catholicism and retweeted criticism of President Donald Trump’s views on immigrants.

Those tweets have caused people like conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer to melt down, writing “WOKE MARXIST POPE” in response to one of Leo’s old tweets from 2015 about Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Mike Cernovich, a far-right Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who was invited to the White House after Trump took office, called the new pope, “a shitlib who was given a title by the Lavender Mafia to sow division in my country.”

But that’s enough about whiners on Twitter. What about the jokes? The good, old-fashioned American tradition of making jokes about the Second City—whether it’s deep dish pizza, hot dogs, or the Bears? Well, there’s been plenty of that too. And below we’ve got some of our favorites.

Pope Leo the XIV when JD Vance https://t.co/1D89u8FR55 pic.twitter.com/792FfjcYug

— 679 Enthusiast (@marionumber4) May 8, 2025

pic.twitter.com/e0nh7fpRoW

— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) May 8, 2025