Caribbean Matters: Exploring the new pope's Black Caribbean ancestry

Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born cardinal selected on Thursday as the new pope, is descended from Creole people of color from New Orleans.

The pope’s maternal grandparents, both of whom are described as Black or “mulatto” in various historical records, lived in the city’s Seventh Ward, an area that is traditionally Catholic and a melting pot of people with African, Caribbean and European roots.

The grandparents, Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié, eventually moved to Chicago in the early 20th century and had a daughter: Mildred Martinez, the pope’s mother.

The discovery means that Leo XIV, as the pope will be known, is not only breaking ground as the first U.S.-born pontiff. He also comes from a family that reflects the many threads that make up the complicated and rich fabric of the American story.

The Times had receipts and provided photos as proof in See Historical Records Documenting the Pope’s Creole Roots in New Orleans, ”another story from Fausset, who grew up in New Orleans:

The detective work of Jari Honora, the New Orleans genealogist and historian, was based on analysis of historical documents, including census records, many of which are presented here. Other documents were unearthed by the archdiocese of New Orleans or obtained independently by The New York Times.

[…]

In their totality, the documents begin to trace the story of a family, on Pope Leo’s mother’s side, with a diverse background rooted in New Orleans’s unique Afro-Caribbean culture that later moved to Chicago in the early 20th century.

It is unclear why they left, but many Creole families like theirs moved north at the time in search of better-paying jobs and a less racially hostile environment — a story that finds parallels in the new pope’s emphasis on tending to migrants and poor people.

[…]

The documents also suggest a story not uncommon among some American people of color who underwent such journeys: a switch in racial categorization from Black to white. One of the pope’s brothers, John Prevost, 71, who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, confirmed the family’s ancestry but told The New York Times that he and his brothers always considered themselves to be white.

As for his mother, he said, “I really couldn’t tell you for sure. She might have just said Spanish.”

What I find fascinating is the media’s sudden interest in a Creole history that is not news to me, or to many other Black people familiar with issues of “race,” color, and ancestry in Louisiana and the larger Black community. “Passing” for white has also been the subject of several best-selling novels over the years and well-documented by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists.

I did research on the subject for an anthropology dissertation and have written frequently about “race” as a social construct, racism as a harsh reality, “miscegenation,” and free people of color in New Orleans and other parts of the South in past stories here at Daily Kos.

Related | What Pope Leo XIV has said about LGBTQ+ people, immigration and abortion

In “Black Kos: White people invented the ‘one-drop rule.’ Now Trump and his minions want to take it back,” I discussed “hypodescent,“ aka “the one drop rule” as it applied to Kamala Harris. I also covered the topic in depth in “Louisiana’s multi-colored history and hypocrisy.” In “Slippin’ into whiteness: Melungeons and other ‘almost white’ groups,” I wrote about groups who have worked very hard to be anything but Black.

Lest you think the new pope is far removed from being classed as Black or colored, his ancestry would’ve marked him as “colored” under Louisiana law as recently as 1982, because it wasn’t until 1983 that the state repealed its law governing racial classification. The New York Times reported on the development in “Louisiana Repeals Black Blood Law”:

My genealogical research on my extended family includes the fascinating history of my first cousin’s grandmother, who we all called “Grandma Jean”and lived into her nineties. She was the granddaughter of a Louisiana plaquée, born in 1824. She is listed in census records as both Black and white. Contrary to many people who had the ability to pass and fade to white, Grandma Jean would have had a fit if anyone thought she wasn’t Black.

My own exposure to Louisiana Creoles of color took place when my parents moved us from New York City to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where my dad had taken a job teaching at Southern University, an HBCU. My mom had prepared me for the move by explaining that the campus was “all Negroes.” But when I got there, to my 9-year-old eyes it was integrated because there were light-skinned, white-presenting Creole students and teachers on campus.

Later that year, my mom took me to visit a Creole relative in New Orleans. The matriarch of the family, known as “Ma mère,” was very light-skinned. I was very tanned from playing outside and she examined me with a frown. 

“Marjorie, if that chile gets any darker, next time you visit you will have to come in the back door,” she told my mom in her French Creole accent.

My mother lifted one eyebrow, looked at her and replied, “I guess, we will not be coming to visit you again,” and we left. We never went back.

The New York Times’ Campbell Robertson posted a story detailing a “white” person’s discovery of his Black ancestry.

Pope’s Family History Offers a Glimpse Into the American Creole Journey

After his father died, Mark Charles Roudané, a retired Minnesota schoolteacher, began going through his dad’s papers. There were scores of binders, the records of a life as a prosperous, white, Presbyterian businessman in the Midwest.

All of the files were labeled — except one. When Mr. Roudané, 55 years old at the time, opened the unmarked folder, he found an old photograph of a Black man named Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez.

Dr. Roudanez, a wealthy physician in New Orleans who co-founded two of the earliest Black-owned newspapers in the United States, was Mr. Roudané’s great-great-grandfather.

“In an instant, my identity shifted.”

The news that Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born cardinal who became Pope Leo XIV, had family roots among New Orleans Creoles has enthralled few people as intensely as those who share his heritage. While members of the pope’s immediate family identified as white, various records from New Orleans from just a generation earlier describe his maternal grandparents as “mulatto” or Black. Such a story is a curiosity for many who are unfamiliar with Creole culture. But for those with Creole roots, there is something immediately familiar about it.

When Pope Leo XIV emerged on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as the new head of the Catholic Church on Thursday, the Rev. Lawrence Ndlovu of Johannesburg could not help but wonder at the shade of his skin.

“‘You’re not the classical white sort of person,’” Father Ndlovu said he had been thinking while watching from South Africa. “But I couldn’t figure out, What are you?”

The revelation that Pope Leo is descended from Creole people of color from New Orleans, including some with potential ties to the Caribbean, has excited Father Ndlovu and other Catholics around the world, particularly those in Africa and other places with deep African ancestry. Several have said they saw him as one of their own — someone they could better relate to and who may champion their causes.

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Edwin Espinal Hernández, the director of the law school and a genealogist at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic, said he and other experts had found some indications that the pope’s grandfather was born in Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

The Boston Globe’s Danny McDonald wrote an an article titled “‘It’s beautiful to see’: Black Bostonians react to the pope’s Creole ancestry”: