The Latin Mass, Pope Leo and the Sold-Out Celebration at Chicago's Rate Field
If you got a ticket, want a letterpress printed cardboard fan promoting the Latin Mass?
Holy Mackerel! Tickets for the Pope Leo celebration sold out quickly, faster than an arch angel sprinting for a home run, much faster than a prayer to heaven and especially faster than a Western Union telegram to the Holy Father and White Sox fan himself.
What will be interesting is the signage that shows up at Rate Field. I expect a lot of “Pope Leo, we love you!” and “Long Live Pope Leo!” and of course, “Hit a Home Run, Pope Leo!” How many of those signs and banners will be printed at Fedex, can only be surmised.
This is a tremendous opportunity for the Midwest letterpress community to step up and create something eye-catching, reverend and witty. There are a number of letterpress studios in Chicago and Evanston (Chicago Cubs’ territory, sorry, Holy Father.) But will they? The letterpress community is largely agnostic and anti-Christian. Notice I used the word, ‘largely,’ I hope I’m wrong and I’ll see some creatives whose names and faces I recognize create posters that are fantastically pro-Pope and pro-Catholic.
Where’s the vacuum, there’s opportunity for Christian printers like myself. I don’t own a Vandercook printing press, a Heidelberg windmill, large old alphabet blocks the size of a store window to print a sign that could be seen and read even at the back of Rate Field (disclosure: I’ve yet to visit Rate Field. I’m a Chicago Cubs fan, lifelong resident of the north side, temporarily relocated to Milwaukee.)
But I do own a provisional press, a small plywood press with PVC platen, which was actually recently featured on the popular printing related Youtube channel for the Sacramento History Museum. Howard set the provisional press on the bed of a much larger, old press and printed a printing press cut (the word used to describe letterpress blocks with images on them).
Back to the provisional press. Since I’m not one of the lucky few with a ticket to the Pope Leo celebration, I won’t be attending. However, I would love to contribute with my work on a vintage-style cardboard fan, the kind used to keep church goers cool at Mass, funerals, baptisms, confirmations and first communions, back when air conditioning was less common and were lucky to catch a breeze wafting through an open stained glass window.
I found two vintage-style reproduction fans at the Milwaukee Public Library. I'll use the cardboard 7.5 inch squares at templates for my own fans. See two poster boards below, backgrounds already inked up. Now, I would really love to promote the Latin Mass to the Holy Father. You’ll see I’ve set out Cooper 48 point type with the Pope’s name an the words Latin Mass. I could personalize it even more with a parish associated with the Latin Mass - St. Stanislaus in Milwaukee or St. John Cantius in Chicago.
What about “No more Traditionis Custodis, Papa Leo (this is reference to the encyclical written by the late Pope Francis restricting the Latin Mass.) I only wish I had this electrotype letterpress cut of a priest facing the altar during the Holy Sacrifice, per the Latin Mass. Alas, someone else bought it. I pray that this person uses the image in reverential manner, but you never know these Catholic-bashing days. If you have something like this in your collection that you don’t mind me borrowing, please let me know? (By the way, religious letterpress cuts such as this are somewhat common as newspapers used to print Mass times. My goal is to collect and use as many of these as I can when I find them in antique shops or flea markets. Tip me off if you see any yourself. Here’s another one featuring a nun, although I think it’s unfair for the seller to insinuate that the nun would rap the children on the knuckles with a ruler. I really love this Bible and the rising/setting sun letterpress cut. It would certainly ‘enlighten’ my print shop if I had it, to borrow the seller’s words, but alas, someone else bought it.
Anyways, I’ll print these church fans for the Pope Leo celebration in the next few days. If. you want them for Rate Field, you can message me, send me an SOS or a Western Union Telegram and I’ll ship them to you pronto at your cost. I’m going to have fun with these in the next day or two, so watch this Substack.
So let me know in the comments your thoughts on messages to Pope Leo (or other Catholics at Rate Field) that you think might resonate with Chicagoans, the world and martians on Mars. Think fun, catchy, a play or words. Latin words are OK but not everyone knows Latin beyond “Habamus Papam” (we have a Pope.) Look forward to your suggestions. This will be fun. If this works out nicely, maybe we can promote these to the local media, after all the Cooper metal type, all of 100 years old, was made at a now-defunct foundry. And letterpress type was so key to the development of Chicago’s publishing industry and Printer’s Row. Let’s print something fantastic that shines the light on Chicago’s faithful, in particular the long-suffering parishioners at Cantius and St. Stanislaus, where the Latin Mass is jam-packed each Sunday. People don’t believe me that the Latin Mass is more popular than ever, let’s show otherwise!
On another note, don’t forget to subscribe to my stampfans’ page, where I’ll be releasing my new novel, A Car Ferry Tale, one chapter at a time. First month’s subscription is FREE.