This American pope: Leo XIV’s bloodline reflects the US melting pot

Pope Leo XIV, who on Thursday was elected as the first-ever US-born leader of the Roman Catholic church, has a familial bloodline that reflects his homeland’s fraught relationship with race – and why the nation’s stature as a melting pot of origins has long endured, records unearthed by genealogists show. Those same census records identified Leo’s maternal grandparents as Black. By 1920, the Martinez family had moved north to Chicago and away from the racially oppressive US south. And there is no indication Leo has ever publicly discussed his racial identity much. John Prevost, for his part, told the Times that his brothers did not discuss their Louisiana roots.