Talk about a blessing: When a Chicagoan got elected pope, restaurants in the Windy City were bound to capitalize on his celebrity. Several eateries have already commemorated the honor by renaming classic menu items, just as Cardinal Robert Prevost has taken on the title of Pope Leo XIV.
And when it comes to pizza, you know there’s gonna be a silly pun or two. Such as the “Pope-erroni” from the Aurelio’s Pizza chain in Homewood, Illinois.
Prevost paid a visit to Aurelio’s Homewood store in August 2024, and the iconic brand, which opened in 1959, has now proclaimed itself the pope’s favorite pizza place. The then-cardinal ordered a thin-crust pepperoni pie during his visit, prompting Joe Aurelio, president and CEO of the chain, to rename the pizza in Pope Leo’s honor last week.
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“He was hungry,” Aurelio told 9News Australia in an interview that quickly went viral on TikTok. “Once we got the news, since the pope was here, we designated this table as the official Pope’s Table. We have an actual priest’s chair from the altar of a local church.”
Aurelio said his company has trademarked the name “Pope-erroni,” although the exact spelling of the word is unclear. (The Chicago Tribune referred to it as the “Pope-erroni,” and we pray that’s correct.)
But we do know how another Chicago pizza institution is spelling it. The Los Angeles outpost of Gino’s East announced its version, dubbed the Pope-roni (with one R), last week. It features three kinds of pepperoni—traditional, spicy, and cup-and-char— along with “Chicago sausage as an accent.” It’s available in deep-dish and thin-crust tavern styles.
“Chicagoans are proud of our very own South Side Pope, and we’re celebrating with a pizza that’s easy to pontificate about,” Gino’s East LA co-owner Tod Himmel said in a press release. “It’s a holy trinity of pepperoni with the divine sausage we all love.”
The Pope-roni will be available at Gino’s East LA throughout the new pontiff’s time in office, Himmel said.
Meanwhile, Aurelio’s is winning global publicity for its papal pizza connection. “The world’s calling right now,” Joe Aurelio told the Tribune.
“It’s just amazing that this little town of Homewood is on the world’s map right now for something that the pope is directly connected with,” Aurelio said in the interview. “He blessed us all just by being here. I’m Catholic, too, so it’s really a blessing and an honor to have this connection.”
Aurelio said the new pope is “just a true Chicagoan, so I’m sure he’s eaten at a lot of places around the city and the suburbs. I’m just glad I’m one of those and proud to be the pope’s pizza. I look forward to trying to ship some pizzas out to the Vatican.”
