Family historian reflects on Pope Leo’s black Catholic roots
August 19, 2025
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CWN Editor's Note: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops posted a reflection by Jari Honora of the Historic New Orleans Collection, who uncovered Pope Leo’s Creole roots.
“After first perusing Pope Leo’s father’s French and Sicilian immigrant roots, I turned to his mother’s family only to discover that they were Creoles of color deeply rooted in my hometown of New Orleans, and in fact only left New Orleans in the second decade of the 20th century,” wrote Honora. “The joy was bittersweet because like so many branches of Black American families, the Pope’s maternal family migrated out of the South, leaving behind not only their ancestral homeland but also identification as people of color—as we call the phenomenon, they ‘passed’ for white.”
Honora added:
As recently as the 1810s and 1820s, the Successor of St. Peter had family members who were enslaved. When we think about the adversities that Catholics of color experienced in the 19th and early 20th centuries just to participate in the Church and moreover to pursue religious vocations, it is incredible that in a winding path known only to God, the great-great-great-grandson of enslaved Catholics is now the Pope.The above note supplements, highlights, or corrects details in the original source (link above). About CWN news coverage.
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