A wooden icon painted at a kitchen table in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood now sits in the private bedroom of Pope Leo XIV, delivered to the Vatican by a Chicago attorney and completed in a sprint of just ten days. The image, depicting Mary cradling the infant Jesus, traveled from a modest home studio to the Apostolic Palace, and the pope himself wrote back afterward to say thank you.
The gift began with Michael Airdo, a Chicago attorney who planned to visit his old friend Pope Leo XIV and wanted to bring something meaningful, according to WGN-TV. After seeing religious artwork at St. Rita on Chicago's South Side, Airdo commissioned an icon of Our Mother of Good Counsel, the very image for which Pope Leo's own religious order is named. He turned to Joseph Malham, a Chicago-based religious iconographer, and gave him a notably tight deadline to get it done.
Malham completed the commissioned icon in about ten days, working in a corner of his kitchen in Andersonville. He painted a traditional image on wood showing Mary, both protective and maternal, holding baby Jesus — Mary dressed in blue to signify humanity and heaven, Jesus in red to represent divinity and sacrifice. Malham added roughly three or four extra days of work just to paint the florets and jewels of the crown, according to the same report.
A Pope With Deep Roots in the Augustinian Order
The connection between the icon and the pope runs deeper than a simple gift. Pope Leo XIV joined the Midwest Augustinians in 1977, an order formally known in Chicago as the Order of St. Augustine, Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel, per the outlet's reporting. That province, whose history is traced by the Midwest Augustinians, was established on April 26, 1941, decades after the Order of St. Augustine first arrived in Chicago in 1905 to build its first foundation west of the Appalachian Mountains.
Pope Leo XIV — born Robert Francis Prevost — was elected the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, becoming both the first American pope and the first Augustinian ever elevated to the papacy, according to the Midwest Augustinians. Joe Ruiz, an Augustinian brother ordained by then-Bishop Prevost, explained that Mary's counsel in the biblical wedding story was simply to do whatever Jesus tells her — the theological heart behind the devotion to Our Mother of Good Counsel that gives the Augustinian province its name, per the same report.
Delivering the Icon to the Apostolic Palace
Once finished, Airdo delivered the icon to Pope Leo XIV during a meeting in the pope's private library inside the Apostolic Palace, the station reports. According to Airdo, the pope loved the icon and was visibly moved and mesmerized upon seeing it. Pope Leo said he planned to keep it on a shelf in his own bedroom as a daily source of inspiration, and he was photographed holding the image.
Weeks later, Pope Leo XIV wrote a personal note to Malham dated August 26, 2026. In it, he offered many thanks for the beautiful icon of Our Mother of Good Counsel, thanked Malham for his prayers, and promised to remember him in his own prayers. The note was signed, “Sincerely in Christ, Leo the 14th.” Malham has said the icon will accompany the pope in his prayer life for years to come.
A Centuries-Old Devotion, Rendered in Egg Tempera and Gold Leaf
Iconography itself is a sacred art form dating back nearly 2,000 years to the early days of Christianity, using stylized sacred images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints, often rendered in gold leaf and egg tempera. Malham, a Chicago-based iconographer and author of three books, spent 20 years as artist in residence at St. Gregory the Great Church in Chicago, according to U.S. Catholic. His process, per his own studio site, typically involves writing icons on poplar panels in egg tempera and 23-karat gold leaf, blending traditional Byzantine and Russian imagery with his own distinct style.
The devotion to Our Mother of Good Counsel has been in the keeping of the Order of St. Augustine for centuries, according to the Oblates of St. Augustine. The original fresco enshrining the image sits in a church in the small Italian town of Genazzano, a site that has drawn devotion from popes and saints including St. John XXIII, St. John Paul II and Saint Teresa of Calcutta, according to EWTN Vatican. Pope Leo XIV himself visited the shrine on May 10, 2025, praying at the altar and before the Marian image there, the outlet separately reported.
