Pope Leo XIV may be one of the most powerful people in the world, so it only makes sense he is related to some pretty powerful people, too.
“Finding Your Roots” host Henry Louis Gates Jr. said the pontiff, who was elected to the position in May, is related to several prominent celebrities and politicians, which he revealed in a piece he wrote for The New York Times Magazine.
Gates teamed up with genealogists at American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami to go back 15 generations while identifying more than 100 people related to the pope, a native Chicagoan born Robert Prevost. The study managed to trace his mother’s side as far back as 1500s Spain.
Leo, the 267th pope and first born in America, had eighth-great-grandparents born in France, who moved to Quebec in the middle of the 17th century.
“Through one Canadian ancestor, Louis Boucher de Grandpre, who was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, the pope is related to numerous Canadian-derived distant cousins, including (former Canadian prime ministers) Pierre and Justin Trudeau, Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Justin Bieber, Jack Kerouac and Madonna,” Gates wrote in NYT Magazine.
It is not made specifically clear how Leo is related to each person.
The pope’s personal history is fascinating and not without controversy.
Gates said that Leo’s grandfather, Salvatore Giovanni Gaetano Riggitano Alito, was one of many descendants born in Sicily and that he probably immigrated to the United Staes in 1905.
“Salvatore was on his way to becoming a priest but was unable to take his vows and chose to marry instead,” Gates writes.
Salvatore had a mistress named Suzanne Louise Marie Fontaine from France, who came to the United States about a decade after he did.
“Their extramarital affair produced two sons out of wedlock, Jean, the pope’s uncle, and Louis, the pope’s father. They were given their grandmother’s maiden name, Prévost,” Gates wrote.
“That’s how the pope ended up with a French surname — minus the accent — even though his paternal grandfather’s ancestors were almost all Italian.”
The pope also had family that settled in New Orleans, with at least four white ancestors owning slaves. Leo also has African American ancestors who were either slaves or slaveholders themselves.
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