Black America Celebrates African Descent Heritage of New Pope

By Stacy M. Brown
Senior National Correspondent
Black Press USA

Black America is taking pride in a truth shaking up the Vatican and resonating through the streets of New Orleans: Pope Leo XIV – formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago – has Black and Creole roots.

The Pope’s factual anthropological roots are not just symbolic. According to genealogist Jari Honora, his maternal lineage traces directly to the Black community of New Orleans’ 7th Ward, with family ties to Haiti, and census records identifying his ancestors as “Black” or “Mulatto.” “By the Europeans’ own ‘1/8th’ rules, we have a Black Pope,” noted author Elie Mystal declared. “Anyway, Pope’s grandfather is Haitian. We kind of got a Black Pope. ‘End Woke’ is not gonna be happy about this.”

Further, New Orleans historian Jari Christopher Honora also speaking to the National Catholic Reporter and Black Catholic Messenger, detailed how the pope’s grandparents married in 1887 at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church on Annette Street in New Orleans before migrating north. His mother, Mildred Martнnez, was the first child in the family born in Chicago. “The Holy Father’s ancestors are identified as either Black or Mulatto,” Honora said.

The Chicago Tribune and New York Times also reported on Pope Leo’s mixed-race background and Creole lineage, noting that his election marks a defining moment in the Church’s evolving identity. “As a Black man, a proud son of New Orleans, and the U.S. Congressman representing the very 7th Ward neighborhood where our new Pope’s family hails from, I am bursting with pride today,” said Rep. Troy Carter. “This is history!”

Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial called Leo XIV’s background “universal,” saying, “Here’s an American whose ministry was in Peru, who has roots in the American South and also ancestry in the American Black community.”

Leo XIV is a member of the Augustinian Order, named after the African theologian St. Augustine of Hippo. His election came from a conclave in which two other leading contenders – Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana and Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of the Democratic Republic of Congo – were also men of African descent.

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But Leo XIV stood apart – not just as the first pope from the U.S. but as one known for his outspokenness on racial justice, immigrant rights, gun reform, and the abolition of the death penalty.

TIME Magazine reported that his selection represented a Vatican rebuke of efforts by wealthy Americans and political operatives aligned with Donald Trump to influence the papal outcome. Known in Rome as “The Latin Yankee,” Leo XIV used his verified X account (@drprevost) to amplify criticism of Trump-era immigration policies, often reposting commentary from respected Catholic figures.

The Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. affirmed, “On behalf of the Black Press of America as the authentic voice of 50 million African-Americans and millions more throughout the African diaspora, we join to celebrate Pope Leo XVI, a world leader of African descent who speaks truth to power with courage and grace.”