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Betty Chinn, Eureka’s tireless humanitarian and homeless services provider, recently returned home from a trip to Vatican City, where she’d been personally invited to attend Mass and meet with Pope Leo XIV. 

She’s still not over it. 

“Sometimes I can’t even breathe I’m just so emotional,” she told the Outpost this morning. 

Leo, a Chicago native, is actually the third pope Chinn has met. She met Pope Benedict in Rome and Pope Francis in Washington, D.C., she said. But until this most recent visit she’d never gotten a picture — “because I felt what’s in your heart is more important to me,” she explained. 

But this time, the Pope’s people provided her with a photo, and she’s grateful for it. 

“It was an absolutely amazing moment,” she said.

When the emailed invitation arrived, Chinn suspected it was a prank. When she figured out that it was genuine, she reached out to her bishop in Santa Rosa to see if he had arranged it. He said he had nothing to do with it. Eventually, she spoke with someone from the Vatican.

“When I finally talked with this lady, she said, ‘We really feel it’s time for you to come, meet the Pope,’” Chinn said.

Coincidentally, Chinn was in Rome when the emailed invitation arrived. She was on a pilgrimage with fellow members of her church. However, Pope Leo was in Africa at the time, and the suggested date for their meeting was still a couple of weeks off.

“They asked if I could stay until the 29th and I said, ‘No, my grandnephew is getting married,’” Chinn recalled. But her son volunteered to take her back to Italy for the visit.

Once there, they attended Mass with more than 10,000 others at St. Peter’s Basilica, but they had a position of privilege in the second row.

“They read the Mass in 12 different languages,” Chinn said. “They even read it in Chinese. That got in my heart,” she added, her voice trembling. “I hadn’t heard my language in so long.”

Chinn, who was born to wealthy, Christian parents in China’s Guangdong province, wound up homeless as a child after her family was labeled as dissidents in Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. After seeing her elder brother and sister-in-law executed by gunfire, Chinn and three siblings fled on foot to Hong Kong. At age 14, she immigrated to the United States. 

She said she thought about family members still in China during this visit with the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church.

“When he wanted to meet and talk to me, I thanked him for [speaking] the truth,” she said. “I pray for all the people and especially the needy. I pray for my country; I pray for everybody who suffers; I pray for my community. He smiled at me after I kissed the ring.”

The smile came from his eyes more than his mouth, she said.

She’d grown emotional at the memory, but then her voice perked up.

“How come the men of Chicago have been so good to me? First Obama and then the Pope!” (The former president awarded Chinn the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2010.)

She said Pope Leo exchanged words with her and her son, and when she thinks back on how close she got to sit and the moment of grasping his hand, she feels incredulous.

“How could I get in that area? How could I get a chance to kiss him?” she wondered. “When he looked at me, his eyes smiled. I’m from Eureka, California! Small town!”

Looking back on her life and the 45 years of work she’s done to help the homeless, Chinn said she feels reaffirmed in her faith.

“I really believe God has guided me in the work I’ve done,” she said. “[I’m] a lady with no education. God is there guiding me. He [chose] me and provides what I need, and then he sends the people to surround me.”

She doesn’t even take personal credit for her own indefatigable efforts on behalf of people who find themselves unhoused, as she once was.

“I don’t get sick; I don’t sleep,” she said, perhaps exaggerating just a tiny bit. “I really feel it’s a gift. I never feel old.”

And this trip to meet Pope Leo has only reinvigorated her.

“I cannot settle down,” Chinn said, her voice starting to shake again. “I get so hyper and so emotional. Every time I look at that picture, I cry for my life. I’m so grateful to this country, so grateful for the freedom.”