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Pope Leo XIV received a surprise gift this week while appearing before the Catholic faithful in Vatican City: a box of pizza from his home state of Illinois.
But the story of how the pizza reached his hands is even more surprising. (See the video at the top of this article.)
The pontiff was handed a box of pizza from Aurelio’s as he arrived in St. Peter’s Square in the Popemobile for his weekly audience. Video of the pizza delivery showed the Popemobile coming to a stop in front of a sign that read, “We have Aurelio’s Pizza.”
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Another sign read, “Pope Leo, I brought you 🍕 from Chicago.”
One of Pope Leo’s bodyguards is seen in the video grabbing the pizza box and handing it to him.
The pope, who seemed to be smiling as he received the box, then gave a thumbs-up to Madeline Daley, the Cincinnati resident who had made the trip, in part, to deliver it to him.
So how did a Chicago-style pizza make its way from Illinois to Italy?
The journey, in earnest, began in Ohio.
That’s where Jayden Remias, a 24-year-old Catholic content creator living in Columbus, first baked up the idea.
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“It was an act of love,” he told Fox News Digital.
Remias said his content is meant “to inspire, uplift and edify” all who consume it.
“I know what the world wants,” he said. “It wants truth, beauty and goodness. And so how can I give that to the world? And I started brainstorming ideas – what’s something impossible that would require God to intervene and help me get there? Delivering a pizza to the pope.”
But not just any pizza. It had to come from the flagship Auerilo’s location in Homewood, Illinois – a suburb of Chicago – and home of the “Poperoni Pizza.”
Why Auerilo’s? It’s been widely reported that this is Pope Leo’s favorite pizza after a 2024 photo that went viral showed then-Cardinal Robert F. Prevost posing for a picture with friends at the restaurant.
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Remias recruited a childhood friend to drive with him to pick up the pizza. But on their way from Columbus to Chicago, the van’s battery died.
They eventually made it to Aurelio’s, where Remias announced his intention to deliver the pizza to the pope.
Remias initially intended to fly to Rome himself, but a personal situation interfered — so he called upon Daley.
The interim social media coordinator for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati was headed to the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers.
Now, it seemed she had an even greater purpose.
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Daley told Fox News Digital that her task when transporting the pizza was to “keep it frozen as much as we possibly could.”
She collected dry ice, put the pizza in a cooler and conferred with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to make sure it would pass security screening and customs.
Everything was going according to plan, with the pizza kept frozen, clean and protected – until, of all things, it wound up briefly in the trash.
“The pizza was thrown out by a maid at one of the apartments and in a trash can far away from our apartment, double wrapped in plastic, so still completely safe, but thrown out,” Daley recalled.
“And my mom was contacting the landlord, begging, ‘Please tell me where the trash is. I will go find it myself. You don’t understand how important this pizza is.'”
The landlord returned a few hours later, Daley said, “with the pizza in his hands after having dug through the trash himself.”
On the day of the intended delivery, Daley said she “wrote a note to Pope Leo on the inside of the box saying, ‘This pizza is most likely perfectly fine to eat, but I probably wouldn’t eat it myself.'”
She woke up early for a prime position as the crowd gathered for the pope’s audience.
“And when he turned the corner around St. Peter’s Square, he saw the sign that we had [with] the pizza brand logo on it, and his face lit up,” Daley said.
Aurelio’s owner, Joe Aurelio, said it was “great to see” the pope accept the pizza.
“The pope is one of us,” Aurelio told Fox News Digital.
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“He remembers where he came from, and we’ve already received so many blessings from his previous love and visits at Aurelio’s, so this is just another blessing to have him acknowledge our pizza at St. Peter’s Square. We’d love to have him in again next time he is back home.”
Aurelio also thanked Remias and Daley for making the pizza delivery a reality.
Remias said their quest proves that “nothing is impossible if you trust in God.”
“I’m just in awe of what God was able to do and how He made a way for it.”
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