Inside Pope Leo’s Customer Service Snafu With His Chicago Bank| National Catholic Register
The Holy Father found himself at the mercy of customer service.
It is a scene that feels more like a sitcom script than a Vatican reality: Two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, was elected Pope Leo XIV, he found himself at the mercy of a customer service representative.
The story now making rounds on social media and first picked up by The New York Times was shared by Father Tom McCarthy, an Augustinian priest and longtime friend of the Pope, during a gathering in Naperville, Illinois.
According to Father McCarthy, the leader of the global Catholic Church decided it was finally time to update his personal banking records.
The Call That Failed
Calling his local branch back home, the Pope identified himself by his birth name, Robert Prevost, and explained that he needed to update the phone number and address on his account.
The security screening began. One by one, the Pope provided the correct answers to the bank’s verification questions. But as anyone who has wrestled with a call center knows, “correct” isn’t always enough.
“He was told that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person,” Father McCarthy recounted to the laughing audience.
The Pope, now feeling the weight of the Atlantic Ocean and the walls of the Apostolic Palace between him and his local teller replied, “Well, I’m not going to be able to do that. I gave you all the security questions.”
The Ultimate ‘Don’t You Know Who I Am?’
The employee apologized but remained firm. Finally, the Pope decided to play his only remaining card.
“Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked.
The response was immediate. Believing she was being pranked by a particularly ambitious crank caller, the employee hung up.
Fortunately for the Holy Father, the issue was eventually resolved — not through the bank’s official phone tree, but through the classic Chicago method of “knowing a guy.” Another priest with a direct line to the bank’s president intervened to clear the block on the papal account.
While the bank account is now up to date, the fate of the woman on the other end of the line remains a mystery.
“Could you imagine being known as the woman who hung up on the Pope?” Father McCarthy asked.
It turns out that while the Pope may hold the keys to the Kingdom, the keys to a Chicago checking account are a little harder to come by, as this most-relatabe tale illustrates.
