Shortly after Pope Leo XIV’s election on May 8, genealogists got to work researching his family tree, quickly establishing that some of his ancestors on his mother’s side were Black. More ...

Noblemen, enslaved people, freedom fighters, slaveholders: what the complex family tree of the first American pontiff reveals. Finding the Pope’s Roots By Henry Louis Gates Jr.

On the 1900 census, while his family lived in New Orleans, both Leo XIV's maternal grandparents and his aunts -- Irma and Margaret -- were identified as Black. However, in 1920, after the family ...