Pope Leo XIV's star-studded family tree connects him to Madonna, two pop icons and an Oscar winner
Pope Leo XIV has a surprising connection to a number of Hollywood's most beloved stars, including none other than Madonna.
Although the Queen of Pop, 66, has notoriously clashed with the Catholic Church since the release of her controversial Like a Prayer music video, it was recently revealed she is related to the new pope, 69.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., who hosts PBS' show Finding Your Roots, shared the shocking revelation that the pair are 'ninth cousins, various times removed' during an interview with the New York Times.
After tracing the first American pope's lineage, Gates discovered Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Francis Prevost) and Madonna were related through a distant maternal relative born in the 1590s.
Gates added that through their Canadian ancestor, Louis Boucher de Grandpre, who was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, the pope is related to numerous Canadian-derived distant cousins.'
This includes Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Justin Bieber, Pierre and Justin Trudeau and Jack Kerouac.
Madonna was quick to share the exciting news on her Instagram Story as she shared a photo of them side by side, alongside a caption declaring him her 'distant relative.'
The singer, who was born and raised Catholic, has clashed with the Catholic Church for more than three decades.
Back in 1989, she was condemned by the Vatican State and multiple Popes of the Catholic Church.
She faced controversy in 1989 for her Like a Prayer music video, which featured burning crosses and an erotic depiction of Jesus.
At the time, Pope John Paul II encouraged fans to boycott Madonna in Italy and not attend her Blond Ambition tour in 1990.
Then, years later, Madonna came under fire again in 2006 for staging a mock crucifixion during a concert in Rome in 2006.
This led Cardinal Ersilio Tonino, with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, to declare that she 'should be excommunicated,' per The Independent.
'This time the limits have really been pushed too far. This concert is a blasphemous challenge to the faith and a profanation of the cross. She should be excommunicated,' he previously stated as he condemned her racy performances.
Additionally, she was also previously criticized by the church for her concert in Italy amid her Who's That Girl Tour in 1987, her advertisement with Pepsi in 1989 and for her first book Sex, which she released in 1992.
In December 2024, she incited fierce backlash after sharing AI-generated images of herself with Pope Francis.
The fake images showed the Pope seemingly getting handsy with her as he stood with his arm around her waist and his face very close to hers.
Two years prior, she tweeted to Pope Francis to ask him to meet to discuss 'some important matters' — specially, her 'blasphemous' behavior.
At the time, she tweeted to Pop Francis asking for him to receive her. 'Hellow @Pontifex Francis — I'm a good Catholic. I Swear! I mean I don't Swear! It's been a few decades since my last confession. Would it be possible to meet up one day to discuss some important matters? I've been excommunicated 3 times. It doesn't seem fair. Sincerely Madonna.'
Leo XIV was elected as pope on May 8, 2025 following Pope Francis's death on April 21, 2025.
On Monday, Al Pacino became the first movie star to meet Pope Leo XIV.
During his papacy, Pope Francis met with many celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, Andrea Bocelli, Katy Perry and Martin Scorsese.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
33 minutes ago
- The Sun
Kris Jenner's rumored facelift procedure is ‘risky' & ‘not done often' as surgery costs six figures, top doc claims
KRIS Jenner's rumored deep plane facelift will have been riskier but leave her looking youthful for years to come, a top New York surgeon has revealed. Kris, 69, had fans in a frenzy when she stepped out with a new face this month, looking decades younger. 5 5 5 The reality star's rep confirmed to Page Six she underwent aesthetic enhancements from New York plastic surgeon Dr. Steven Levine ahead of her 70th birthday. Although it has not been revealed exactly what she had done, many critics have suggested she underwent a deep plane facelift as opposed to a regular SMAS procedure. In an exclusive chat with The U.S. Sun, Dr. Norman Rowe, who did not do Kris's work but specializes in deep plane facelifts, explained the difference between the two surgeries. Dr. Rowe said he felt her previous work was "tasteful" and he could immediately tell she'd had a facelift when she stepped out recently - believed to be her second. But he praised Kris for maintaining her looks doing everything from using sun protection to Botox and lasering. He said, "Once you get one of those things done, it's not like you're one and done. It's a maintenance thing. "So she kept her face, you know, up. And she did well. And I think she looks good for her age. I like the result." Asked how much it would cost to have the procedure done, he said, "It depends on whether or not you're getting it in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Miami or New York or LA. I mean, it can range from, five figures to six figures. RISKY PROCEDURE "I do deep planes. I like a deep plane. I switched almost completely over to deep planes. "I just like the results better. It's more reliable. And, in my opinion, I think it lasts a little longer." Explaining the difference between a regular facelift and a deep plane facelift, he said, "Below our skin and below the fat, there's a muscle layer, and it's called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system, or SMAS, we call it for short. "When you do a facelift, you cut out a little sliver of that SMAS and suture the two ends back together to tighten it up. And usually you cut out the sliver somewhere here along the jawline or in here, and you suture together and it pulls it tighter. "So if you think, all right, so that's one way to do it, cut out a section of it. "Another way to do it is make an incision. You get underneath the SMAS, you lift up the muscle and then you pull it. "Imagine if you have a carpet in your house and it has a bubble in it, a wrinkle. There are two ways you could take care of it. You could go along and cut out that wrinkle and then take [that] thread and suture the opening back up. Or you could go to the end of the carpet at the edge of the room and pull the carpet taut. "That's basically the difference between a SMAS and a deep plane. "A SMAS takes out that extra piece by cutting it out directly and suturing together, whereas the deep plane goes to the edge of the muscle, which is right around here in the neck, in the ear. The U.S. Sun asked Dr. Rowe about the advantages of choosing a deep plane procedure over a regular facelift. "In my opinion, I think a deep plane lasts a little bit longer," he said. NERVE DAMAGE "You get a little bit more of a tightening of the muscles when you pull the whole carpet. The dissection is deeper, is further underneath the muscle." He explained not as many people are trained to carry out deep plane facelifts and they can carry risks. "I think, honestly, still, the majority of people out there doing facelifts are probably doing SMAS. It's still kind of like the go-to technique. "It ultimately depends on the surgeon's comfort in doing that deep plane to that point. I'll be honest, it is a little bit more risky than, say, a SMAS. "The nerves that give us our movement in our face to give us our smile, our grimace, and things like that, all of our muscles, the nerves are underneath the muscle. "And so if you're lifting up that muscle to pull that muscle taut, then you can injure those nerves. So there's a little bit [of] risk of that. But again, if you know what you're doing. "In most residency programs, people just aren't doing deep planes because it's a little bit riskier. And so they don't do them. And so residents learn SMAS and they go out and then they do [them] because they weren't trained in deep planes." Dr. Rowe explains there are different varieties of the deep plane facelift from the subtle to the more aggressive, and it depends on the person. "The only way to know [what Kris had done] is to look at her five or 10 years from now," he said. "If she still looks good, it's probably a deep plane … if she starts to show little signs of aging. Probably wasn't. The Kardashian matriarch began her journey with plastic surgery when she got breast implants in the 1980s after giving birth to her first four children: Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob Kardashian. She has continued her cosmetic upkeep and revealed that she's gotten Botox and fillers over the years. Explaining the deep plane procedure, Dr. Rowe continued, "Most people do it under general anesthesia. It's a little bit too much to do under twilight, a facelift. "And again, when we talk about a facelift, a facelift generally includes a neck lift. So we call it fan face and neck lift. "The incision is placed in the hairline, and by the temple, it goes in front of the ear and then behind the ear. So it kind of looks like a J. "The surgery takes somewhere around two and a half to three hours, generally for a face and a neck lift. "Sometimes I'll put an additional incision in underneath their chin in order to tighten up the muscles of the neck." "Recovery? It depends on if someone gets something else done. "A lot of times people will couple that with eyelid surgery, a brow lift, sometimes we'll laser. "I won't be super aggressive when I laser because you don't want to injure the skin any more than or traumatize the skin, any more than it's already been traumatized by surgery." SURGERY AGE Dr. Rowe explained Kris would have been able to start wearing makeup three or four days after the surgery but may still have had some bruising. "You can walk around. I probably wouldn't plan on any social events for a couple of weeks after the surgery. I wouldn't get it done three weeks before a wedding." He revealed there can be complications including nerve injury but it is "rare". "There are three main complications. There's a nerve injury, the incision opening up, and then also immediate post-operative bleeding, which if there is bleeding, then within the first eight hours, then you go back and you stop it. "That's not a permanently disfiguring complication, whereas a nerve injury, maybe. And an incision opening up behind the ear and a wide scar, maybe." He said he would not do a facelift for anyone in their 20s, but he has seen women in their 30s in need of surgery if they have not maintained their looks. "What's the perfect age? When you need it. I see 30 or I see 35 year olds who need a facelift, and I see 65 year olds who need a facelift," he said. "I see 35 year olds who don't need it, and I see 65 who don't need it. So it depends on your body, your lifestyle, how much sun you got, what you've done to maintain your skin, what have you done in the past? "It's like a car. If you take care of your car, your car will get 100,000 miles on. If you beat the heck out of it, you'll be done after 20,000 miles. "So it's the same thing with your body and your face. "If you take care of yourself, you might push off the need for a facelift. And then when you do need it, you're more likely to say, okay, fine, let's do it. "Whereas if you don't take care of it, you're definitely going to need it. And whether you agree to it or not, you know, that's another thing." He added, "What's the youngest I've done … 37. She never set foot into a plastic surgeon's office. She actually lost some weight. And so she needed a facelift. "And we see that now with the Ozempic phase, people are losing weight, and they come in at a younger age who need facelifts and things like that." 5
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
F1: The Movie – Brad Pitt's spectacular racing drama is Barbie for dads
Is this summer's officially branded Formula One film the new Top Gun: Maverick? It's certainly straining every sinew to make you think as much. Unlike the 2022 Tom Cruise blockbuster, F1 sits a few hundred feet below the pinnacle of modern blockbuster showmanship: it's rousing, sleek entertainment rather than transcendent pop cinema – even though in pure sales-pitch terms, a Venn diagram of the two would resemble a hula hoop. In Brad Pitt, it has the 1980s-minted movie star lead playing a wayward yet gifted (and ruggedly handsome) veteran who's pressed back into service to show the youngsters how it's done. While in Joseph Kosinski and Ehren Kruger it has the same safe-pair-of-hands director and screenwriter, intent on hitting all the summer movie beats of a generation ago, punctuated with plenty of armrest-shredding cockpit photography, captured with a fearlessness you can feel in your limbic system, and no visible digital tricks. Yet there is another recent studio hit with which it arguably shares just as much of its DNA. Behind its dewy-eyed machismo and breath-stopping technique, F1 is essentially Barbie for dads: a crafty brand extension exercise that gets away with it through sheer implementational brilliance. To put it another way, there are a hundred possible versions of this film that are awful, and Kosinski and his team have made none of them. Pitt is puppyishly charming, if not quite Cruise-level magnetic, as Sonny Hayes – a crumpled Steve McQueen type and one-time leading light of the 1990s racing scene. His career was ended prematurely by a crash in the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix – while neck-and-neck with Ayrton Senna, no less – though his driverly intuition and nerve have endured. (That really is Pitt driving in the cockpit shots, albeit in a modified Formula Two car, which your non-F1-fan of a critic presumes must be exactly one formula slower than the terrifying aerodynamic beasts shown on screen.) During Sonny's two-decade absence, his flashier former comrade (Javier Bardem) has sidestepped into management, and now owns his own team, Apex Grand Prix: they're on a losing streak, things are desperate, and you can already guess what the last-ditch rescue plan is. Britain's own Damson Idris makes hay with the role of Pitt's new teammate Joshua Pearce, an ambitious, impulsive young Londoner still finding his feet in the sport and the circus surrounding it, while an extremely good-value Kerry Condon is Apex's cool-headed technical director, who brings expertise and nous behind the scenes. This quartet's personalities clash then mesh in all the obvious ways throughout a season that takes Apex from the back of the grid at Silverstone to jockeying for pole position at Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina. But while the film feels monkishly devoted to its subject-slash-product (lots of jargon and driver cameos), those with no prior knowledge of and/or interest in Formula One aren't left to twist in the wind. Commentators constantly explain the rules during the race scenes themselves, and there is much radio chatter about the outrageously unorthodox nature of Pitt's various strategies on the track. (Though note that the first red flag to start flapping around Tobias Menzies' vaguely Muskian investor is that he now feels au fait with the sport after having binged Netflix's F1 documentary series Drive to Survive.) Does the film's corporate tie-in status have a dampening effect? Well, the stakes are never allowed to feel too life-threatening, and rival teams never serve as villains: amusingly, after a Ferrari employee exhibits a mere wisp of poor sportsmanship, we cut instantly to various triumphal shots of the company logo, backed by an old-fashioned blare-a-thon of a Hans Zimmer soundtrack. Yet for the most part F1 feels faithful rather than hamstrung, and the peerless race photography and deft writing around Pitt's character – a late moment involving a pack of cards is even rather moving – are enough to smooth over the niggles. It's a film which understands the pleasure of seeing familiar roads driven with consummate expertise. The F does stand for formula, after all.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Hoda Kotb sparks frenzied speculation that she reunited with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman after gushing tribute
Hoda Kotb has ignited frenzied speculation that she has reunited with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman after she posted a sweet tribute to him on Father's Day. In a heartfelt upload, the former Today show co-anchor, 60, heaped praise on the financier, with whom she shares adopted daughters Haley, nine, and Hope, five. Taking to social media on Monday, Hoda uploaded two sweet photos, one of which saw the two little girls hugging dad Joel. Another snap showed the dad-of-two walking hand in hand with on of their daughters while on a shopping trip. 'A great father's day for a great dad!' Hoda captioned her Instagram post. 'Happy father's day Joel!' In the comments, some speculated whether Hoda and Joel might have rekindled their relationship. 'Are they back together?' asked one. 'He sure is a great dad!' another said. 'How I wish you were still with Joel!' A third wrote: 'She is on and off with this guy.' Others, however, praised the former couple for coparenting their kids harmoniously. 'Those two girls are blessed to have such loving and involved parents,' said one. 'Aww, love seeing Joel! Happy Father's Day!' another said. 'He's a great dad!' exclaimed a third. 'Wish you guys were still together.' A fourth praised: 'You both are rocking this co-parenting gig.' has reached out to Hoda for comment. While Hoda and Joel are no longer in a romantic relationship, they continue to co-parent their two girls and are often together during holiday celebrations, such as Christmas Day and Thanksgiving. New wellness guru Hoda was previously in an eight-year relationship with New York financier Joel, but the couple decided to part ways at the beginning of 2022. They had begun their relationship in 2013 and in November 2019, Hoda announced live on Today that they were engaged. In January 31, 2022, however, she revealed on Today with Hoda & Jenna that she and Joel had decided to end their engagement and would focus on co-parenting as friends. 'Joel and I have had a lot of prayer and meaningful conversations over the holidays and we decided that we are better as friends and parents than we are as an engaged couple,' the talk show host said at the time. 'So, we decided we are going to start this new year on our new path as loving parents to our adorably delightful children and as friends. 'It's not like something happened. They say sometimes relationships are meant to be there for a reason, a season or a lifetime, this was for a season.' Last month, Hoda revealed her youngest daughter Hope has been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, two years after she was rushed to hospital. Returning to the Today show, she opened up about her daughter's diagnosis for the first time to Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin and explained that she's 'constantly monitoring' her child. 'Hope is fine for most of the day. There are just moments where you have to watch her,' she explained. 'I was totaling it up — five minutes at breakfast, five minutes at lunch, five minutes at dinner, sometimes overnight. Add that up, that's a half-hour. So, for 23 and a half hours, she's every other kid, so I try to remember that.' While spending more time with her daughters was the main reason she left the Today show, Hope's condition 'definitely weighed in' on her exit. 'As anyone with a child who has Type 1 (knows), especially a little kid, you're constantly watching, you're constantly monitoring, you're constantly checking, which is what I did all the time when I was [at Today],' she said. 'You're distracted. You just get a priority check in your life. 'I can be here and sweating what's happening to Hope in the morning and in the night, or I can be there and feel relief that I can see.' Hope's health issues began over two years ago. In February 2023, Hoda took two weeks off from the Today show due to a 'family health matter,' she shared at the time. She later revealed that her youngest daughter had been hospitalized due to a sudden, unspecified illness. Hope, who was four at the time, spent several days in the intensive care unit and a little over a week in the hospital. Speaking to Savannah on the show at the time, Hoda said: 'My youngest Hope was in the ICU for a few days and then the hospital for a little more than a week. 'I'm so grateful she is home, she is back home. I was waiting for that day to come. And we are watching her closely. I'm just so happy.'
