ROME — The Chicago delegation traveling with Mayor Brandon Johnson to meet Pope Leo XIV includes some of his closest allies, as well as business owners who are perhaps looking to get closer to both leaders during the splashy odyssey to Vatican City this week.

Johnson’s team revealed the 46-member delegation including progressive political, faith and education leaders early Thursday, after some of his top aides spent the previous afternoon touring Rome with local officials. The trip’s expenses are being covered by World Business Chicago, with some prominent names in the local business scene featured in the list, though the final price tag hasn’t yet been released.

Within Johnson’s inner circle, members include: Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates; his top business liaison, Charles Smith, also VP of World Business Chicago; his budget chair, Ald. Jason Ervin; and nine staffers from the Johnson administration, including his senior adviser Jason Lee. Other elected officials on the trip are Melissa Conyears-Ervin, city treasurer and Ervin’s wife, as well as Alds. Julia Ramírez and Lamont Robinson.

Yusef Jackson, CEO of the Rainbow Push Coalition, will also join the mayor, who has said Sunday he hopes to “do my best to channel the great humanitarian and civil rights leader in Rev. Jesse Jackson” during his one-on-one with the pope. The elder Jackson, one of Chicago’s most famous civil rights icons, died in February and left his formidable organization to his son Yusef.

The mayor himself will arrive this morning ahead of his afternoon one-on-one with Leo, the first American — and Chicago-born — pope, whose advocacy on immigrant rights and historic apology on Monday for the Holy See’s role in legitimizing slavery will be top of the list for Johnson to discuss.

At a City Hall news conference on Wednesday, the mayor said he hopes to talk with the pontiff about “how the pulpit and the pen have to come together to deliver justice for our most vulnerable, as voting rights continue to be eroded by our government and as we continue to see economic disparity.”

Besides local Catholic figures — including the presidents of DePaul and Loyola universities — there are also Jewish, Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal faith leaders represented in the delegation. And business leaders making an appearance include United Airlines director Kristopher Anderson; Charles Johnson, president of cafeteria and janitorial vendor SodexoMagic; Chicago Sky co-owner and operating chair, Nadia Rawlinson, and restaurateur Carmen Rossi.

Also in attendance will be attorney Antonio Romanucci, who has represented high-profile clients alleging police brutality, including against Chicago. At least three of the private sector delegation members are registered lobbyists with the city: Anderson, and political consultants John D’Alessandro and Pasquale Gianni.

Rossi previously has been fined for improper lobbying during Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. Under Johnson, a firm tied to him won a contract to feed migrants in 2024, and last year Rossi’s restaurant, Divan Chicago, hosted a fundraiser for Leaders for Tomorrow, a political action committee launched by Johnson ally Cornelius Griggs.

International trips have often served as an opportunity for local figures to not only make connections abroad but also to build alliances with city officials. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel made multiple international trade trips during his two terms, including a 2016 trip to Rome for the elevation of Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich to cardinal.

There, Emanuel brought along a contingent of campaign donors, elected officials and spouses, mayoral aides, religious leaders and former NBA star Isaiah Thomas. His 2018 trip to China and Japan included a delegation of business heavyweights, but also campaign donors, lobbyists and real estate developers.

Meanwhile, Johnson insisted to reporters in Chicago that his international excursion will not distract him from the pressing issues back home, including the final week of Springfield’s legislative session.

“Conversations happen all the time with a variety of legislators, and so that work continues,” Johnson said at a City Hall news conference before leaving for Rome. “This encounter that I’m going to have with the highest-profile religious leader on the planet is also moving our agenda forward. That conversation is not separate and apart from the work that’s happening in Springfield or City Council or anywhere else.”

State legislators are set to adjourn for the summer this weekend, when a major deal on a new Chicago Bears stadium bill could be finalized and deal Johnson a final blow to his efforts to keep the NFL franchise in the city. Johnson also highlighted the pope’s “stance against endless wars” and nodded to his own tie-breaker vote on a resolution for a ceasefire in the Gaza war two years ago.

“I was the person who broke the tie and took some political consequence for it, but I stand firm on it,” Johnson said.

The pope has condemned the U.S. war in Iran, sparking an unprecedented attack from President Donald Trump who said he was “WEAK on crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” During his Wednesday Mass from St. Peter’s Square, Leo also expressed solidarity with Ukrainians under attack by Russia.

“War does not solve problems; it exacerbates them,” Leo said, to the thousands gathered outside. “It does not build security; it multiplies suffering and hatred. Where missiles and drones fall, hopes are crushed, homes and places of worship are destroyed, and innocent lives are cut short.”

Leo’s opposition to the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants, including the recent wave of mass deportations that has especially hit Chicago, also inspired some of the delegation choices this week.

The Rev. Juan Vargas, an associate priest at Our Lady of the Rosary in Portage Park, ministered in the same buildings that once housed a migrant shelter serving hundreds during Chicago’s 2024 asylum-seeker crisis. After Operation Midway Blitz ripped through Chicago last fall, Vargas was crestfallen to see families stay home from weekly Mass or even self-deport out of fear.

“There’s this massive amount of fear, and to this day it’s still present,” Vargas said. “After living here for 25 years, they said, ‘All right, we just don’t want to live in this kind of fear,’ which is a fear that they already knew existed. … Now, that fear was escalated to an exaggerated amount.”

Vargas, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Zacatecas, Mexico, said he is especially eager that the first American pope “speaks with a voice that hears the cry of the whole world.” He joined a handful of Johnson staffers who toured Rome on Wednesday, discussing environmental sustainability and economic development goals.

Members of the mayor’s office who arrived in time for the foray into a public plaza and bicycle path included Lee; Max Budovitch, deputy mayor for economic development, Department of Environment Commissioner Angela Tovar, photographer Vashon Jordan; and Erin Connelly, communications director. The union of municipal leaders from Chicago and Italy elicited a natural kinship between the two cities, Roman official Elio Tomassetti said.

“Italy and the U.S. is linked by a strong relation and a strong friendship,” Tomassetti, president of Rome’s Municipio XII, told the Tribune from the Casale dei Cedrati cultural center. “In our, let’s say, imagination, (Chicago is) something very important because it’s the first skyscraper, the view of the lake, the story in the movies. For us it’s a very important and legendary city.”

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—Jake Sheridan and AD Quig contributed reporting from Chicago.

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