New pope has Creole roots in New Orleans

Boston Globe

09-05-2025

The discovery means that Leo XIV, as the pope will be known, is not only breaking ground as the first US-born pontiff. He also comes from a family that reflects the many threads that make up the complicated and rich fabric of the American story.
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The pope's background was unearthed Thursday by a New Orleans genealogist, Jari C. Honora, and confirmed to The New York Times by the pope's older brother, John Prevost, 71, who lives in the Chicago suburbs.
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'This discovery is just an additional reminder of how interwoven we are as Americans,' Honora said in a text message late Thursday. 'I hope that it will highlight the long history of Black Catholics, both free and enslaved, in this country, which includes the Holy Father's family.'
It's unclear whether the new pope has ever addressed his Creole ancestry in public, and his brother said that the family did not identify as Black. The announcement of his election in Rome focused on his early life in Chicago and decades of service in Peru.
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Honora, who works at the Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum in the French Quarter, began investigating the pope's background because of his French-sounding name, Prevost, but quickly found connections to the South instead.
His trail of evidence linking Leo to New Orleans includes the grandparents' marriage certificate from their 7th Ward wedding in 1887, a photo of the Martinez family grave marker in Chicago, and an electronic birth record of Mildred Martinez that shows she was born in Chicago in 1912.
The birth record lists Joseph Martinez and 'Louis Baquiex' as Mildred's parents. The father's birthplace is listed as the Dominican Republic; the mother's, New Orleans.
Honora also found records from the 1900 Census that list Joseph Martinez as 'Black,' his place of birth as 'Hayti,' and his occupation as 'cigar maker.' Martinez's details appear on the sixth line of a page of the census that Honora shared with the Times.
'Both Joseph Norval Martinez and Louise Baquié were people of color, no doubt about it,' Honora said.
Joseph Martinez's exact place of birth remains a bit of a mystery -- Honora also found an 1870 Census record that says the pope's maternal grandfather was born in Louisiana. But he said it was not uncommon for people to change their responses on official records.
Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié married at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans. Until it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1915, the church building was on Annette Street in the city's 7th Ward, a historic center of Afro-Creole culture.
Creoles, also known as 'Creole people of color,' have a history almost as old as Louisiana. While the word Creole can refer to people of European descent who were born in the Americas, it commonly describes mixed-race people of color.
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Many Louisiana Creoles were known in the 18th and 19th centuries as 'gens de couleur libres,' or free people of color. Many were well educated, French-speaking and Roman Catholic.
Over the decades, they established a foothold in business, the building trades and the arts, particularly music, with significant contributions to the development of jazz. They continue to be an important strand in the city's famously heterogeneous culture.
The revelation of the new pope's heritage is a tremendous moment for the history of Louisiana Creoles, said Lolita Villavasso Cherrie, a co-founder with Honora of The Creole Genealogical and Historical Association.
'I hate to say it, but we feel, many of us, that our history was hidden from us,' said Villavasso Cherrie, 79, a retired teacher. In part, she said, that's because many Creoles have been able to 'pass' as white over the years.
It was only with the advent of the internet, she said, that many people began to research their family history and became aware of their Creole roots. She noted that a significant number of Louisiana Creoles migrated to the Chicago area in the 20th century.
John Prevost, the pope's brother, said that their paternal grandparents were from France, and that his father had been born in the United States. He said he and his brothers didn't discuss their Creole roots.
'It was never an issue,' John Prevost said.
What all of this means, when it comes to the pope's racial identity, touches on some of the thorniest questions in US society, but also reflects the rich diversity of the American experience.
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'We are all just a few degrees (or less than a few degrees) removed from each other,' said Honora.