A Complicated Blood Line

The Holy Father has an American story to tell.

He is just as much a mutt as most Americans. His tale is one that many of us share. The American story of immigration is very tied to Pope Leo’s history as it is to almost every American.

Leo’s mother’s grandparents were all free people of color, based on census records, living in the Seventh Ward in New Orleans. They were Creole as mixed race people are known in the “Big Easy.” His grandfather was Joseph Martinez, who was either born on the island of Hispaniola (where both the nations of the Dominican Republic and Haiti are located) or New Orleans…the records are a little cloudy.

His grandmother, Louise Baquié, married Martinez in 1887 in Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in New Orleans. Her ancestors were Creole which would have been a mixture of Black, Spanish, and French ancestry. Both listed their races as Black as well as White at times on official forms.

In the very early part of the 20th century, they migrated to Chicago where their daughter, Mildred, was born in 1912 and listed as White on her birth certificate as were her parents. She became a librarian, was a devout Catholic, and had a beautiful voice known for singing the “Ave Maria.”

The pope’s father, Louis Prevost, was born in Chicago in 1920. His father was a Sicilian immigrant named Salvatore Giovanni Riggitano who came here at the turn of the 20th century. He apparently was very cultured and educated because he was a teacher of languages and music.

Leo’s paternal grandmother was a French immigrant, Suzanne Fontaine. Riggitano was still married to someone else when he began living with Suzanne. His wife, Daisy Hughes, had the couple arrested for a brief time before Chicago authorities dropped the charges. In the meantime, Suzanne went to Lackawanna, NY and gave birth to a boy, whose name on the birth certificate was John Prevost. Prevost was Fontaine’s mother’s family name.

Both returned to Chicago where Giovanni Riggitano adopted the name John Prevost. In 1920, Louis Prevost was born. He was the pope’s father. So far there is no confirmation that Suzanne and John were ever married, but they lived together as husband and wife for the rest of their lives.

Louis grew up and served in the Army during WWII. He went to college on the G.I. Bill became a teacher and principal and married Mildred. They had 3 boys of which Robert was the youngest.

Ancestors from everywhere, nationalities and races mixed, a brush with the law…what American family does not have that? President Trump’s grandfather, a German immigrant, ran a brothel and restaurant in the Canadian Yukon earning the seed money for the family’s fortune. Ironic it was Canada that gave him his start having arrived in the U.S. penniless after fleeing from national service in his homeland.

The first and only American pope comes by his knack with language naturally. It may also be true because of growing up in an immigrant family, he too could live and work as a missionary in Peru. He assimilated and became a citizen of that country. Now he leads a very small independent nation, Vatican City. He is back to his Italian roots.

It is interesting how so many of us chose to ignore our familial past. Bob Prevost, now Leo XIV, is the grandson of immigrants and Creoles at that. Like many of us, he grew up in the bosom of Catholicism with our lives centered around our parishes.

For immigrants and children of immigrants, it was a warm and familiar place. Maybe the need was less so in what was to be the suburbs and rural America. In the big cities of the North and Midwest, your parish was a place of succor and, along with the political clubhouse, became the place to go for spiritual needs but also practical ones for surviving in a not very sympathetic world.

The people of Italian, Irish, and other European origins no longer need anything from their church but the spiritual connection. Does that mean they should forget their immigrant pasts and how without the guidance of the priests, sisters, and brothers, many of our ancestors would not have survived.

Leo XIV knows and remembers the Catholic Church of his youth. It was just emerging and becoming more American than foreign. What it still should be is a place for those in need to go and be helped whether they have been here for generations or just landed on American shores.

Leo’s story sounds like a very American one to me.