Nella Pizza e Pasta is the latest Chicago pizza spot to celebrate former Cardinal Robert Prevost’s ascension to pope, but this promotion is more than a cash grab.
A portion of the sales of Nella’s Piccante Pizza, dedicated to Pope Leo XIV, will go to support youth programs at St. Thomas the Apostle, a Catholic church in Hyde Park, according to a post on Nella Pizza e Pasta’s Instagram account.
Nella Pizza e Pasta is located less than a mile from the Catholic Theological Union, a graduate school of theology and ministry founded in 1968. That’s where Prevost officially joined the priesthood, the post states.
The Piccante Pizza is topped with sausage, pepperoni and giardiniera. It’s one of several pizzas recently either created or renamed by Chicago pizzerias in the new pope’s honor.
Related: Blessed Are the Pizza Makers: The Pope Sat Here, and Now it’s Chicago’s Most Holy Table
Owned by acclaimed pizzaiola Nella Grassano, who immigrated to the U.S. from Naples, Italy, Nella Pizza e Pasta has earned plenty of honors in its own right. It received the Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand Award four years in a row—from 2020 through 2023.
Grassano’s pizzas “offer a wondrous chew and char,” Eater Chicago raved last year. Writing for Chicago Reader, Mike Sula once noted that the pies boast “raised, lightly blackened crusts bordering underskirts stippled by constellations of tiny, crispy blisters. These were worthy, foldable delivery vehicles for high-quality toppings like the marinated tuna, olives, and sweet onion of the tonno e cipolla.”
