Ayer, MASS-- Many people around the world were surprised to hear an American was elected as the next leader of the Catholic Church. Now, imagine finding out you’ve actually met the new Pope.  

“I got a text from my college roommate and he said, did you hear the pope is from Chicago and I hadn’t heard at that point and then I pull up Google and say new pope and I see it and go, oh my god, I know this man, I’ve met him several times,” PJ McCarthy said. 

McCarthy and Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV are both Chicago natives.  Before he became the first U.S.-born Pontiff, Pope Leo had ties to St. Rita High School on the southwest side of Chicago where McCarthy attended school.

“He has celebrated mass at my high school I don’t know how many times,” McCarthy said. 

McCarthy now lives in Ayer, Massachusetts and during his senior year at St. Rita he attended a three-day religious retreat called Kairos. There, attendees have the option to go to confession, which was something McCarthy, being 17 at the time, wasn’t sure he wanted to do.  

“I said okay, I’ll give this a try and it just so happens I sat with him,” McCarthy said. “It was almost by chance. It wasn’t like I was seeking him out or anything.”

McCarthy remembers confessing to the now Pope for roughly 30 minutes about fighting with his three younger siblings at the time.

“Just down to earth. Not judged at all. Just honestly listening and taking in what I was saying,” he said. “That is what was really cool about the whole situation was it developed into a conversation and 25 years later I can still remember bits and pieces of it.”

Fast forward five years later, McCarthy is now graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover. His commencement speaker was the now Pope and he has the yearbook photos to prove it. 

"I reminded him at that point in college, hey you probably don’t remember this, I went on was the Kairos retreat and he was like, oh yeah I’ve been on many Kairos,” he said. “So,  like that connection happened so it was really kind of cool.”

McCarthy would’ve never guessed he’d have a connection to one of the most famous people in the world. While he isn’t a regular church goer these days, he said in a way this special link has brought him a little closer to his faith.

“I’ve definitely found myself praying a little more these last few days, just kind of before you go to bed,” McCarthy said. “It’s really kind of surreal still that all of this is coming out, like I’ve been nerding out over it as weird as that sounds.”