Nationwide — Pope Leo XIV has multiracial ancestry, together with Black heritage, in keeping with family tree analysis by Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Discovering Your Roots host traced the pope’s household tree again 15 generations, revealing enslaved ancestors, slaveholders, freedom fighters, and several other celebrities and high-profile public figures in his lineage.
Gates, the 74-year-old host of PBS’s Discovering Your Roots, met with the pope on July 5 on the Vatican to personally current his findings. He and his spouse, historian Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset, labored with a group of researchers to compile the household historical past, which was additionally featured in The New York Instances Sunday Journal.
In accordance with Individuals, the analysis reveals Pope Leo XIV is distantly associated to celebrities corresponding to Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Justin Bieber, Hilary Clinton, Pierre and Justin Trudeau, and creator Jack Kerouac. Their shared ancestor dates again to the 1590s on the pope’s maternal facet.
Gates additionally confirmed that Pope Leo’s lineage consists of each Black and European ancestry. A few of his ancestors have been enslaved, whereas others have been slaveholders. Two have been freedom fighters.
In an Instagram put up, Gates referred to as the Vatican go to “one of the crucial significant and deeply transferring moments of our lives.”
Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Prevost, grew up in Chicago together with his mother and father, Louis and Mildred, and two brothers. He later served because the bishop of Chiclayo in Peru and led the Augustinian order earlier than turning into pope. He’s a twin citizen of the US and Peru.
