Dolton closes on purchase of Pope Leo XIV’s boyhood home at cost of $375,000

Dolton has closed on the purchase of Pope Leo XIV’s boyhood home in the village, but what will happen with the modest brick building is up in the air.

The village closed Tuesday on the home, 212 East 141st Place, paying $375,000, including commission fees, Mayor Jason House said Thursday.

House said a steering committee is being organized to figure out how best to use the property.

“We will then lay out the plans to trustees and the community,” the mayor said.

An auction of the home by New York-based Paramount Realty USA was scheduled to close July 17, according to Paramount’s website. A reserve price of $250,000 was set for the home. The auction was to close last month but was extended.

But House said in May he had been in contact with the home’s owner, Pawel Radzik, and said negotiations aimed at a purchase by the village were underway.

The home was purchased by Radzik, a Homer Glen-based home rehabber, last year for $66,000. He then renovated the home’s interior.

The house recently got a new roof, with a contractor, Windy City Construction, donating the work to the owner, House said.

House said the village is talking with interested partners in plans to reuse the home, and said village officials are hopeful the Chicago Archdiocese will join the village in the effort.

He said restoring the home to how it appeared when Robert Francis Prevost lived there with his family “has been part of the discussion, but nothing is firmed up at this time.”

Prevost lived with his parents and sibilings for many years in the home, and it’s become a tourist destination since his election as pope. Dolton has had to have police regularly patrol the neighborhood.

The pope’s parents — Louis Prevost, a school administrator who died in 1997, and Mildred, a librarian who died in 1990 — owned and lived in the brick house for decades. Louis Prevost sold the home in 1996 for $58,000.

The future pontiff lived in the house full-time until going off to a Michigan seminary for high school in 1969.