Recently appointed Pope Leo XIV is connected to a group of well-known top-tier celebrities, yet his family lineage has modest beginnings, as uncovered by a genealogical study.
Investigations unveiled that Robert Francis Prevost, the inaugural American to ascend to the helm of the Catholic Church, shares familial ties with Madonna, Justin Bieber, Hillary Clinton, and various other prominent personalities.
Academic Henry Louis Gates Jr., in collaboration with the American Ancestors research center and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, meticulously traced Prevost’s lineage, with the findings later disclosed in a groundbreaking feature by The New York Times.
Gates Jr, who is known for his research on African American culture and history, took an interest in the project after learning about Prevost’s Black ancestry.
According to the researcher, the Pope’s maternal grandparents, who lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, were described as “mulatto” and “Black” in public records.
“This was earthshaking news, but we knew it was only the beginning,” Gates Jr. wrote.
Prevost was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and is of French, Italian, Spanish, and Creole descent.
One of his eighth-great-grandparents moved from France to Quebec, Canada, by the mid to late 1650s, which is where his celebrity links come from.
Prevost descends from Canadian ancestor Louis Boucher de Grandpre, who was born in Quebec, and through Grandpre has several distant cousins.
These cousins include former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his brother Pierre, actress Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, singer Justin Bieber, novelist Jack Kerouac, and Madonna.
After Prevost’s family tree was published, superstar singer Madonna, whose parents were Roman Catholic, shared her excitement on social media.
In an Instagram story, she shared a picture of herself throwing her hands up in excitement alongside her father Silvio Ciccone and wrote, “Silvio! We’re related to the Pope!
“Strike a pose!” she wrote in the excited picture, before sharing the New York Times headline with her followers.
POPE’S ANCESTRY
The motley crew of celebrities wasn’t the only bombshell revelation found in the Pope’s family tree.
The farthest back that his ancestry was traced was back to Spain in the 1500s on his mother’s side, and through that lineage, genealogists found that Prevost is related to minor nobility.
Four of his 11th-great-grandfathers were listed as “hidalgos,” which means gentlemen, in the 1573 census for the small town of Isla.
But Prevost’s ancestry isn’t all noble. At least 17 of his ancestors were identified as partially Black, and many of them were once enslaved.
Researchers say that his ancestry became intertwined with African Americans when relatives moved from Canada to New Orleans.
One fourth-great-grandmother of the Pope, Marie Jeanne, was an enslaved “mulata,” a dated term to describe someone with Black and white ancestry.
She was counted among the property of François Lemelle, who lived in New Orleans.
After Lemelle died, he left Jeanne one-fifth of his estate, including some enslaved people. Thirty years after his death, she owned 1,040 acres, and she went on to own at least 20 slaves.
LEO’S FAMILY
Today, Prevost is known as a beloved sibling and uncle by his brothers, who were elated to hear about his election.
After he was chosen for the sacred position, Pope Leo’s brother John, 71, said his sibling used to “play priest so he put a tablecloth over our mom’s ironing board and we had to go to Mass.”
He said the Pope would use the candy Necco Wafers as “communion” wafers as they played pretend.
“It was all taken very seriously, it was not a joke,” John said.
Louis Prevost, the Pope’s oldest brother, said that he always knew that his sibling was destined for greatness.
“From the time he was five or six years old he knew this was his fate — not that he would be Pope, but that he would be a priest,” Louis told Good Morning America.
“He had that from a very young age, and he never faltered
“We used to tease him all the time, ‘You’re going to be the Pope one day.’
“We knew something was special about him.”
Who is new American Pope Robert Prevost?
PREVOST was born in Chicago in 1955 to immigrant parents of French, Italian and Spanish descent.
After graduating from Villanova University in Pennsylvania with a degree in maths, the future pontiff joined the Order of St Augustine, taking his vows in 1978.
Ordained as a priest in 1982, he joined a mission in Peru where he spent many years heading up a seminary.
Returning to the US in 1999, he then met controversy when he allowed alleged child abuser Father James Ray to reside at a friary in Chicago.
He was made archbishop in 2023 and within a few months he was promoted to the cardinal by late Pope Francis.
Overall, the new pope is considered a centrist, however, on many social issues he has been hailed as progressive.
He has been seen to advocated for marginalized groups as the Francis did.
But Pope Leo XIV has opposed ordaining women as deacons, which has made him seen as conservative on church doctrine.
The multi-talented Catholic Church head can also speak English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese – and can even read Latin and German.
