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Chicago Tribune
22-05-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Historical records about the pope's grandfather unveiled by the Cook County clerk's office
Ever since news broke that the new American-born pope is from Chicago, researchers and hobbyists have wasted no time digging into historical records to learn more about the pope's roots. That was no different for the staff at the clerk's office of the Circuit Court of Cook County Archives. 'I think there's a lot of excitement about the pope being from Chicago,' Mariyana T. Spyropoulos, clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, said. 'And so our staff are always looking for 'Is there a connection?'' Initially, Spyropoulos said that her staff looked into their documents for people with the last name Prevost. The search turned up empty-handed, but that did not stop them. Her staff conducted a deeper dive online, which led them to a group of genealogists that made the connection between the last name Prevost and a man named Salvatore Giovanni Riggitano — the paternal grandfather of Pope Leo XIV. That discovery prompted the staff to go back into their own archives, and this time they found something: a Declaration of Intention signed by Salvatore Giovanni Riggitano in 1920. It was the first step Riggitano — originally from Italy — was taking in a process to become a U.S. citizen, a process that according to the clerk, Riggitano appeared to have never finished. The connection was made last week by the clerk's office and is just one of many discoveries researchers have made on the American-born pope. Earlier this month, New Orleans genealogist Jari Honora discovered that all four of Pope Leo XIV's maternal great-grandparents were 'free people of color' in Louisiana based on 19th century census records. The discoveries into the new pope's background provides an opportunity to spotlight to an international audience America's complex history of melding cultures, immigration and racial divides. It also brings renewed attention to the importance of archival documents in connecting people to those that came before them. 'You could touch the document that your ancestor touched,' Spyropoulos said. Indeed, it is not uncommon for people to come to the clerk's archives and cry when given the opportunity to hold a document that a distant relative may have signed. 'You never know who you know you're going to have a connection with through our archives,' Spyropoulos said. Salvatore Giovanni Riggitano was born on June 24, 1876, in Milazzo, Italy, but was living in Naples before he emigrated to the U.S. He arrived in the U.S. through the port of New York and worked in the states as a language teacher, according to his Declaration of Intention. Riggitano signed that document when he was about 44 years old and living in the Rogers Park neighborhood. A group of a little over a dozen amateur and professional genealogists were able to discover even more information about Riggitano. Sean Meyer, an amateur genealogist who worked on that project, said that the group of professionals and hobbyists joined forces online over a shared interest in learning more about Pope Leo XIV's paternal grandparents. 'We knew who the pope's father was, we knew who his sibling was and we knew what they listed their parents' names to be,' Meyer said, noting that they also knew the grandfather was a language teacher. Working with the name Prevost, Meyer said that the group found many ad listings for a language school that had the name Prevost in it: Riggitano-Prevost School. 'One of the things in genealogy is when you're at a brick wall, which is what we call an impasse in the family tree, you start to look at friends, associates and neighbors,' Meyer said. 'So we really wanted to look into this Riggitano man knowing that the Prevost was the individual we were looking at.' Eventually, the genealogists made the finding that Riggitano and Prevost shared the same birthday, which led the group to believe they were the same person. That discovery, along with the discovery of a form that said John Prevost immigrated to the United States under the name Riggitano, led the group to further believe that Salvatore Riggitano and John Prevost were the same person. According to their findings, Riggitano was the youngest in his family and received his diploma in languages, history and mathematics in 1895. Riggitano's Declaration of Intention states that he immigrated to the U.S. in 1905, although the genealogists have traced his immigration to as early as 1903. When he arrived, he traveled from New York to Quincy, Illinois, and went on to become a teacher of Romance languages. He worked at a couple of different schools before opening the Riggitano School of Languages in 1922, which rebranded to the Riggitano-Prevost School in 1934. Riggitano frequently advertised his language school in newspapers. A search through the Tribune's own archives found listings for the Riggitano-Prevost School from the 1930s all the way to 1956. The Tribune's archives also include a death notice for John Prevost listed in 1960. While Meyer is no stranger to genealogy, he never once thought that he would work on a project about a figure as significant as the pope. Ultimately, what the Chicagoland native admires most about this project is how much of the pope's story is relatable for other people. 'And I think that's why people were so interested in the pope's ancestry, because it's such an American story,' Meyer said. 'And I think not just what we've uncovered, but his whole background — growing up in Chicago and the experience in the Catholic communities, so much of that is such an American story for people.' search project will inspire others to take on their own genealogy projects. 'Genealogy is one of those hobbies that we think should be accessible to everyone, and definitely has been made more accessible for everyone thanks to the available resources on the internet,' Meyer said. Spyropoulos echoed a similar sentiment and encouraged people to visit the archives at the clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County. 'We obviously have very passionate staff who like history, who like, you know, documentation, who have attention to detail, and they would help anybody,' Spyropoulos said. Those interested in visiting the archives can email archives@ or can call 312-603-6601. Visitors can also walk into the archive room on the 11th floor at the Daley Center, located at 50 W. Washington St., Suite 1113. No appointment is necessary.
Straits Times
17-05-2025
- General
- Straits Times
A century-old romance that gave Pope Leo XIV his family name
Genealogists released a report on May 15 revealing the background of the Pope's grandparents. PHOTO: REUTERS CHICAGO – The more that Americans learn about Pope Leo XIV and all his complex, diverse family history, the more they see themselves. One set of genealogists uncovered that on his mother's side of the family, Pope Leo descended from Creole people of colour from New Orleans, a discovery that thrilled residents of that city who felt a connection to the first American pope. Now, another story on a different side of the Pope's family has emerged. Genealogists have found that his paternal grandparents in Chicago were once accused of a charge that might seem prudish now: A century before the former Cardinal Robert Prevost became the Pope, his grandparents were arrested for 'unbecoming conduct', a story that was breathlessly covered in the gossipy, sensationalist newspapers of the late 1910s. The press called it 'an illicit affair' that morphed into a love triangle. Newspaper articles and other public records show that the Pope's grandfather, Salvatore Giovanni Riggitano, was married to another woman while accused of having a relationship with Suzanne Fontaine, who later became the Pope's grandmother. Riggitano and Fontaine would eventually take the surname Prevost from Fontaine's mother, starting a new family whose lineage now leads directly to Vatican City. The story of Pope Leo's grandparents, European immigrants who found love and a brush with the law in Chicago, is incomplete and somewhat murky. But public records give a glimpse into what happened, beginning in their home countries of Italy and France, and eventually tracing to the Pope, who will be formally installed as pontiff in Rome on May 18. A group of online genealogists, the Genealogy Discord, released a report on May 15 revealing the background of the Pope's grandparents and how their names and lives shifted over time. Riggitano was born on June 24, 1876, in Sicily, Italy, records show. He moved to the United States soon after the turn of the 20th century and became a teacher, described in newspapers as a highly educated man with an unusually sharp intellect who taught music and languages. Riggitano taught Spanish for a time at a high school in Quincy, Illinois, then a small town of 35,000 people on the Mississippi River about 480km south-west of Chicago. He also worked in Chicago, newspapers reported. 'For two winters in Chicago he has been engaged as a teacher by the 'Lovers of Italy', a fashionable club which studies the Italian language, art and history, and which is composed of many of the wealthiest and most prominent women in Chicago,' the Quincy Journal reported in 1908. In 1914, Riggitano, then 37, married a woman named Daisy Hughes in Chicago. An affair to remember But by March 1917, the Quincy Daily Herald had turned to covering another aspect of Riggitano's life. 'Riggitano in Triangle,' the headline read. According to the article, Riggitano and Fontaine were arrested at the prompting of Hughes, who reported to the police that he was inappropriately entangled with Fontaine. 'Both declare innocence of the charge made against them by the wife of Riggitano, and that it is all merely a case of jealousy that has no reason for existence,' the Quincy Daily Herald reported on March 26, 1917. By then, Riggitano and Hughes were living apart. Online genealogists said Fontaine, who is sometimes identified in records as Ms Fabre or Ms Fountan, then went to Canada, later Detroit and eventually Lackawanna, New York, where she gave birth on July 23, 1917, to a boy she named John Centi Prevost – using her mother's family name. That boy would eventually become the Pope's uncle. Fontaine and Riggitano would also take the surname Prevost, and Riggitano would adopt the Americanised version of his middle name, John. Fontaine returned to Chicago and in 1920 had another baby boy, Louis Prevost, the father of Pope Leo. It was not clear from available records whether Riggitano divorced Hughes, or whether he and Fontaine married. But a death notice in 1960 made clear that the union was deep and lasting. The notice for John Prevost, formerly Riggitano, called him a 'devoted husband of Suzanne', a loving father of John C. and Louis M. and a grandfather of three. The death notice for Suzanne Prevost, formerly Suzanne Fontaine, in 1979 notes that she died in a hospital in Detroit at the age of 83, and that she was a member of the Third Order of Carmelites, a Roman Catholic religious order of laypeople. She was a 'fond grandmother of Louis, John and Robert Prevost', the notice said. NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
