Boston exhibit features in-depth look at ancestry of Pope Leo XIV

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 29, 2025 / 06:00 am

A Boston exhibit is inviting guests to explore Pope Leo XIV’s family tree in depth, spanning 14 generations of history tracing the pontiff’s connections to noblemen, freedom fighters, enslaved men and women, and even modern-day pop culture stars.

American Ancestors, a national center for family history, heritage, and culture, created the “The Ancestry of Pope Leo XIV: An American Story” exhibit for people to discover the first American pontiff’s lineage by reading stories, searching records, and exploring his family tree.

The exhibit presents information compiled by expert genealogists to highlight the pope’s history, because “the diversity of his ancestry is as layered as the history of America itself,” Ryan Woods, CEO of American Ancestors, told CNA.

Tracing 14 generations

Shortly after the first American pontiff was announced, historian and genealogist Jari Honora publicly noted that the pope surprisingly had Black and Louisiana Creole ancestry. The finding inspired a number of other researchers to dig into the pope’s family tree.

Following the announcement, American Ancestors wanted “to research the full ancestry of Pope Leo XIV,” Woods explained. Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of the ancestry television show “Finding Your Roots” on CBS, helped lead the charge alongside other genealogists from American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogical Club of Miami. 

“Over just a few days, we were able to bring his lineage back 14 generations,” Woods said. Once the research was complete, The New York Times published it in June as an interactive report.

Archivists from the Archdiocese of New Orleans had created a Lousiana family tree after discovering that Pope Leo’s mother had ties to New Orleans. Following the publication of Gates’ findings they realized the research did not include Catholic records from New Orleans, which had left out some additional stories.

The archdiocese found archives dating to the early 1720s with the help of “sacramental records of baptisms, marriages, funerals, and burials,” Sarah Waits, research archivist for the archdiocese, told CNA.

“The Catholic aspect of his family and … the records that [the archdiocese] has in the archives are absolutely fundamental for any genealogy research,” said Waits, who worked directly on the New Orleans family tree. “We realized that we had a treasure trove right in our own archive related to his family.”

The archdiocese shared its family tree to add to Gates’ research and expand the family tree with the additional records. Gates later presented the completed research to Pope Leo at a private audience at the Vatican in July.

American Ancestors decided to open the experience to the public through the new exhibit that opened Oct. 4. It has already drawn a number of “curious and interested” people.

“To have a world leader show the relative complexity and richness of American families and its history was something we thought was really important, both for the study of genealogy [and] history itself,” Woods said.

Surprising finds

The in-depth research revealed a number of surprising connections that the exhibit details.

Through one ancestor named Louis Boucher de Grandpre, the pope is related to numerous Canadian-derived distant cousins including former Canadian prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Justin Trudeau, Hillary Clinton, actress Angelina Jolie, and singers Justin Bieber and Madonna.

A number of Louis’ other descendants ended up settling in New Orleans. Through this connection, “the family in New Orleans was identified within the Black Creole community,” Waits said.

Then going back a few more generations there were “records of enslaved ancestors, even into the 1820s and 1830s,” Waits said. “So … not that many generations ago, the Holy Father had enslaved ancestors.”

The researchers identified four white ancestors who owned slaves in the U.S. They suspect there were probably others in Cuba, which was a slaveholding society. They also discovered that eight of Pope Leo’s Black ancestors are known to have enslaved at least 40 other people of color.

The farthest back the overall research spanned was to Spain in the 1500s on Pope Leo’s mother’s side. Four of his 11th-great-grandfathers are listed as “hidalgos,” or minor untitled nobility. One of their grandchildren was even a captain of land and sea in the Royal Armada who spent years fighting Dutch privateers trying to take over Portugal’s colonial holdings in America.

The research even revealed how the pope got his surname, Prevost. At least five generations of his father’s ancestors were born in Sicily, including the pope’s grandfather, Salvatore Giovanni Gaetano Riggitano Alito, who is believed to have immigrated to the U.S. in 1905. Salvatore was on his way to becoming a priest but was unable to take his vows and chose to marry instead.

The family tree showed that two of Salvatore’s children were not his wife’s sons but rather the children of a French woman named Suzanne Louise Marie Fontaine. Salvatore and Suzanne had two sons — Jean, the pope’s uncle, and Louis, the pope’s father. They were given their grandmother’s maiden name, Prévost, which led to the pontiff’s French last name.

An exhibit with a mission

Pope Leo’s history is diverse, with “stories of enslavers and enslaved people, immigrants from France, Spain, and Haiti,” Woods said. He explained the hope is that sharing Pope Leo’s rich history will inspire people to look into their own lineage.

“Recent surveying in the United States has shown that more than 70% of Americans believe knowing your family history is important, but only about 10% have actually actively researched their family history,” Woods said. “So people can see this global human story and begin to see the possibility of what they can find in their own family history.”