Pope Leo XIV’s ancestry includes African American roots and ties to Justin Bieber
The Catholic Herald• June 16, 2025
The ancestry of Pope Leo XIV has been traced across more than 15 generations and four continents, encompassing African American, French, Spanish, Sicilian and Cuban roots. According to a report published by The New York Times Magazine on 11 June 2025, his maternal grandparents from New Orleans’ Seventh Ward were described in early 20th-century records as “black,” “mulatto” and “free persons of colour.” His family tree includes enslaved individuals, slaveholders, Spanish hidalgos, French Canadian settlers and Sicilian immigrants. Genealogists have also confirmed that he is distantly related to a number of public figures, including Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Madonna, Justin Bieber and Jack Kerouac.
The research was conducted by genealogist Jari C. Honora, in collaboration with the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami and American Ancestors. It identifies more than 100 of Pope Leo’s ancestors, extending as far back as 16th-century Spain. Four of his 11th-great-grandfathers are recorded as hidalgos – minor nobles – in the 1573 census of Isla, a town in northern Spain. Their descendants included Diego de Arana Valladar, a Spanish naval officer who fought Dutch privateers, and Diego de Arana Isla, who later served in Panama as a captain of artillery.
The Pope is also descended from Antonio José de Sucre, a South American military leader who fought for independence and became the first constitutional president of Bolivia. This connection comes through Diego’s sister and is collateral rather than direct, but forms part of the extended family tree. Other maternal ancestors settled in Cuba in the 17th century, where four generations were born in Havana before some branches migrated to Louisiana.
On his father’s side, five generations of the Pope’s ancestors were born in Sicily. His paternal grandfather, Salvatore Giovanni Gaetano Riggitano Alito, was born in 1876 and emigrated to the United States in 1905. He was originally preparing for the priesthood but left the seminary and had a relationship with Suzanne Louise Marie Fontaine, a French immigrant who arrived in the United States around 1915. Their sons, born out of wedlock, were given the surname Prevost – the maiden name of their paternal grandmother. This is how the Pope came to have a French surname despite his Italian paternal lineage.
Among Pope Leo’s forebears are multiple slaveholders and formerly enslaved people. At least four white ancestors in the American South owned slaves, including François Lemelle, who enslaved 20 individuals, and Charles Louis Boucher de Grandpré, who served as Spanish governor of Baton Rouge and enslaved at least 11 people. Several of the Pope’s black ancestors also owned slaves after gaining their freedom. One of them, Marie Jeanne, was manumitted in 1772 and went on to possess more than 1,000 acres of land and over 20 enslaved people by the time of her death. These holdings were passed down through the family, along with land and property in Opelousas, Louisiana.
A total of 17 of Pope Leo’s ancestors are identified in records as “mulatto,” “free person of colour” or similar terms. The family tree reflects both the mixed-race dynamics of colonial Louisiana and the complex social structure of its free Creole population. Some ancestors were born enslaved, others were freed, and a number went on to own slaves themselves. Several purchased relatives in order to prevent them being sold elsewhere – a known practice among free black slaveholders in 19th-century Louisiana.
Pope Leo’s ancestry also includes French Canadians who emigrated to Quebec in the 17th century. Through one of them – Louis Boucher de Grandpré – the Pope shares a common lineage with a number of public figures. Among his distant cousins are Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Jack Kerouac, Madonna and Justin Bieber.
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