Father Ryan Brady never expected an email reply from the new Holy Father. But after Pope Leo XIV was elected, Fr. Brady took “a shot in the dark” and wrote to him, simply to share his joy and his promise of prayers. To his surprise, the Pope responded kindly, personally, and generously, and even arranged a ticket for Fr. Brady to greet him after the general audience on Feb. 11.

Fr. Brady, pastor of St. Christina Parish in Chicago and chaplain to nearly 5,000 members of the Chicago Fire Department, knew he couldn’t arrive empty-handed. “What do you give the man who needs nothing?” he asked. The answer came from home: a Chicago Fire Department chief’s helmet. The white helmet, he noted, is easy to spot at the scene of a fire.

Before his meeting with the Pope, Fr. Brady received an unexpected sign in Rome. Lost on a walk, he found himself at St. Rita’s Church, an Augustinian favorite, on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Praying for the intercession of St. Rita, “the patron saint of impossible causes,” he noticed a grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes staring right at him. In that moment, he heard the reassurance in his heart: “All will be well, Ryan, rest easy.”

“That’s the guy who’s in charge. He’s the one that we should follow.” At the top of the front plate, they placed “Pope Leo XIV”, and on the bottom “Chicago”. In the center where an engine company number would go, they placed a cross, because the Pope “stands firmly with Jesus Christ…as he leads the universal church.”

The gift sparked laughter between the Fr. Brady and the Holy Father. “Firemen are putting out fires all the time,” Fr. Brady joked, “and so do popes, apparently.” Pope Leo received the gift with warmth — an example, Fr. Brady said, of being a gracious receiver. We should never “rob someone of the opportunity to be generous,” he explained, because love bears fruit in both the giving and the receiving.

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