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Business Mayor
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Mayor
Pope Leo's grandfather was immigrant from Sicily, genealogists reveal
Evidence that the Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV's bloodlines reflect the US's legacy of immigration – and complicated relationship with race – has continued to emerge since he recently became the first American ever elected to lead the Roman Catholic church. The family history service Ancestry recently announced that a team helmed by senior genealogist Kyle Betit had determined Leo's paternal grandfather, John R Prevost, immigrated to the US from north-eastern Sicily. That revelation came as Leo used his first address to world diplomats on Friday to say that migrants' dignity must be respected. Some interpreted the remarks to mean Leo may be willing to clash with the Donald Trump White House's policies seeking to generally crack down on immigration to the US. 'My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate,' Leo told ambassadors at the Vatican. The information about Leo's Sicilian roots surfaced in part on a form in 1940 that Prevost – living in Chicago at the time – was required to fill out because he was a foreign national and had not become a naturalized US citizen. The form, along with other relevant genealogical records, indicated that Prevost was born on 24 June 1876 in Milazzo, a province of Messina, Italy, and named Salvatore Giovanni Gaetano Riggitano. The document alluded to his arrival in New York on the steamship Perugia in May 1903, one of roughly 4 million Italians – the bulk of them Sicilians like Riggitano – who immigrated to the US between 1880 and 1915 in hopes of fleeing poverty, political upheaval as well as other hardships, Ancestry's research showed. Riggitano eventually adopted John as his first name, anglicizing the one given to him at birth, and took the surname of his wife, Suzanne Prevost, as his own. He taught Italian, French and Spanish. Eventually, he lived in Chicago with his wife and family, according to his résumé, newspaper articles and advertisements, birth records and census information, all of which were consulted by the Utah-based Ancestry. Pope Leo XIV arrives to hold an audience with representatives of the media in Paul VI hall at the Vatican on Monday. Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters Betit said that one of the Prevosts' sons, Louis Marius, eventually married Mildred Agnes Martinez. Mildred's father, Joseph, was evidently born on the Caribbean island containing the Dominican Republic and Haiti. And for a time, Joseph lived with Mildred's mother, Louise, in New Orleans's Seventh Ward, a bastion in the city for people who were Creole, a term utilized there to describe those of mixed race, according to other genealogists. The Martinezes – the future pontiff's maternal grandparents – at one point identified as Black. But by 1920, when racial oppression was rampant as well as often violent throughout the US south (and not yet deemed unconstitutional by the country's federal supreme court), the Martinezes had moved north to Chicago. And, as other similarly situated families in the US did, they switched their racial identity to white. Louis and Mildred Prevost raised three sons within the Catholic faith in Chicago, the youngest of whom was Robert. Robert Prevost was ordained a priest in 1982; became the worldwide leader of the Catholic religious order colloquially known as the Augustinians; shepherded a Peruvian diocese; was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in September 2023; and headed the Vatican entity in charge of selecting new bishops around the world. On 8 May, after a two-day conclave in Rome, about 460 miles from his paternal grandfather's Italian homeland, Leo was elected to succeed the late Francis as head of the worldwide Catholic church and its 1.4 billion members. 'We often see parallels between the past and the present,' Betit said in a statement. 'In the case of the new pope, his grandfather journeyed from Italy to America, and [his] journey brought him back to Italy as pope.' His predecessor frequently clashed on the topic of immigration with Trump, who won a second US presidency in November in large part by promising to carry out mass deportations. The first few months of Trump's second presidential term have indeed been marked by steady news of immigration-related detentions and removals in the US. In fact, on Friday, his administration drew a supreme court ruling rejecting its efforts to resume deporting Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law. As a cardinal, Robert Prevost, for his part, had gone on social media before becoming pope and reposted an opinion column criticizing an assertion by JD Vance, Trump's vice-president, that taking care of one's own people before turning to others was consistent with the teachings of Catholicism. And, during his speech on Friday at the Vatican to ambassadors, he said: 'All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged. It is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God.' Vance was scheduled to lead a delegation of US officials at Leo's inaugural mass on Sunday.
Boston Globe
10-05-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Pope Leo XIV's Creole roots tell a story of New Orleans
That simple switch, from 'B' to 'W,' suggests a complex, and very American, story. Advertisement For much of the 19th century, New Orleans operated under a racial system that distinguished among white people, Black people and mixed-race Creole people such as the Martinezes. But by the early 20th century, Jim Crow was the order of the day, and it tended to deal in black and white, with myriad restrictions imposed upon any person of color. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The selection of Robert Francis Prevost as the first pope from the United States and the subsequent revelation of his Creole roots have brought those historical realities to the fore -- and an interview with the pope's brother John Prevost, 71, connected them to the present day. Late Thursday, Prevost, who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, told The New York Times that his brothers always considered themselves to be white. As for his mother, he said, 'I really couldn't tell you for sure -- she might have just said Spanish.' Advertisement And so, a story of American racial rigidity also suggests a certain fluidity, constrained by the often harsh racist past that is an inescapable part of the country's story. New Orleans is not unique in its exposure to such stories. But it knows them well. Jari Honora, a local genealogist and historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum in the French Quarter, discovered the new pope's New Orleans roots on Thursday. Since then, he and others, including in the Dominican Republic, have been pushing to find out as much as they can about Leo's family history. In addition to the census records, much of the information recovered so far has come by way of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, which maintains thousands of records dating back to 1720. Katie Beeman, director of the archdiocese's archives, has found marriage records from 1887 for the pope's maternal grandparents, and from 1864 for his great-grandparents. Beeman was especially excited when she uncovered the record that Eugenie Grambois, the pope's great-grandmother, had been baptized in 1840 at St. Louis Cathedral, the spired basilica in the heart of the French Quarter that is among the city's most recognizable landmarks. Beeman called her mother to share the news. At a special Mass at the cathedral Friday, Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond of New Orleans brought attention to the discovery. The pope's ancestor had received her first sacrament in the same font that is still in the back of the church. 'There are many connections we have with him,' the archbishop said in his homily. Advertisement Similar sentiments were expressed across New Orleans, especially among those who share Leo's Creole heritage and now feel a special connection to the new pontiff. 'This is like a reward from God given to us for everything we've struggled through,' said Denease Sorapuru, who identifies as Creole and descended from an ancestral mix of Irish, Italian, Basque and Native American heritage. On Friday, Beeman and other researchers and genealogists continued digging, hoping to identify even more of the pope's family tree in Louisiana and beyond. 'It seems like it just keeps going,' she said. A major question that historians hope to resolve is the birthplace of the pope's grandfather. Although he married into an old New Orleans family, records indicate that Joseph Martinez might have been relatively new to the city. His marriage certificate matches the 1900 census record showing that he was born in Haiti. But other documents list the Dominican Republic or Louisiana as his birthplace. Nailing that down has become a goal for historians in the Caribbean, said Edwin Espinal Hernández, a genealogist and the director of the law school at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, a Roman Catholic university in the Dominican Republic. Experts have yet to find Martinez's birth certificate, but they have found other indications that he was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Espinal Hernández said. Whatever the answer, many in New Orleans knew enough about the family's roots by Friday to feel a greater kinship with the pope. Michael White, 70, a jazz clarinetist, bandleader and retired music educator who grew up Catholic in New Orleans, said Leo's selection had left him 'shocked and surprised and happy.' Advertisement 'I think he will get a lot of support from people down here,' White said. 'I think there will be an outpouring of not only pride, but you know, a desire to, to help him and hope that things can become better for the Catholic Church, but also for people here.' Sorapuru had a humble request. She remembers the thrill of Pope John Paul II's visit to New Orleans in 1987. Leo needs to come, too, she said, and preside over Mass at St. Louis Cathedral. As far as she's concerned, his roots are enough to make him a product of New Orleans. And she wants to welcome him home. This article originally appeared in
