In the days after Pope Leo XIV celebrated the first Mass for the care of creation at Borgo Laudato Si’ on July 9, a discussion erupted among priests on Facebook.
“Is that a Hansen?” they asked. “It looks like a Hansen.”
The item under discussion was the pope’s deep green chasuble, accented with a gold orphrey (a vertical band down the center) and circular yoke.
Someone finally chimed in and said, “It’s a Hansen,” according to Gerard Arens, who owns the House of Hansen, Inc., a 117-year-old liturgical vestment retailer, with his wife, Ellen.
Located in a storefront on a busy stretch of Irving Park Road just west of the Kennedy Expressway, the House of Hansen has supplied vestments to priests and bishops in the Archdiocese of Chicago, across the United States and around the world for generations. It also creates vestments for Anglican clergy and members of other religious traditions.
Current customers include Cardinal Cupich and New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and the business’ 11 seamstresses and tailors outfitted each of the five auxiliary bishops installed in the archdiocese in February.
But the Arenses were surprised this summer to get a call saying Pope Leo — who had been a customer when he was Bishop Robert Prevost of Chiclayo, Peru — wanted them to make his vestments for the care of creation Mass.
The July 9 Mass was celebrated at Borgo Laudato Si’ (Laudato Si’ Village), an education center on integral ecology in Castel Gandolfo created by Pope Francis in 2023, based on the principals outlined in his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.”
House of Hansen had about two weeks to create the vestments for the pope and five concelebrants, Ellen Arens said, working with a Chicago-based liaison and videoconferencing with people at the Vatican as they finalized the original design.
The fabric, a DaVinci brocade with crosses and crowns of thorns, and the gold accents showed to advantage in photographs from the Mass, celebrated outdoors on a sunny day in front of leafy green trees and plants.
Gerard Arens said he had the pope’s measurements on file from previous visits, and the ultimate design of the chasuble with the circular yoke and orphrey is similar to one he created for the pope when he was named bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2015. The House of Hansen has a photo of the future pope wearing those vestments during the 2024 celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Diocese of Chulacanas, Peru, after had become a cardinal and was serving in Rome.
Before becoming pope, Leo XIV visited his hometown of Chicago on a fairly regular basis, seeing his brother, friends and fellow members of the Midwest Augustinians.
The last time the Arenses saw him in person was in 2023, just before he became a cardinal. He visited the shop with an Augustinian seminarian, and chatted with Gerard Arens for about a half-hour while they waited for an alteration.
“Just before he left, he told me he was being made a cardinal and wouldn’t be coming back,” Arens said. “He told me he had a position over there.”
When the Mass for the care of creation vestments were done, they were carried to the Vatican by a priest who was going there, Ellen Arens said.
That’s often how vestments are sent to clergy around the world, such as those created for an Assyrian bishop in Australia, she said. Customers find someone in the United States who will be traveling to them, and ask them to deliver the vestments. Otherwise, delivery costs could double the price of the order, which is largely determined by the cost of the fabric.
Since the photos of the vestments were published around the world, the phone has been ringing at the House of Hansen. Most of the company’s business is word-of-mouth, and often priests or bishops will specifically request a design they saw someone else wear, Gerard Arens said.
The pope’s design, however, will not be replicated, he said.
Arens said that his staff all worked on the Vatican order, whether for the pope’s vestments or the coordinating vestments of the cardinals who concelebrated, and they were all very excited to be working on something for the pope.
“Our seamstresses are very persnickety,” he said, acknowledging that that is a good thing. “When one of them was working on the miter, and I told her the pope would wear it, she said, ‘Don’t worry. It will be perfect, like it always is.’”