Catholic Church elects Black Pope
| Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, the first pope of African descent since the fifth century |
Catholic Church elects a Black pope The Catholic Church on Thursday elected its first American pope in history, and the first Black pope since the fifth century, according to the publication Black Catholic Messenger. Leo XIV is not known to have publicly commented on his African ancestry, which is part of a mixed heritage that includes French, Italian, and Spanish roots. According to the U.S. Census, Prevost’s mother, the late Mildred Martinez, was the mixed-race daughter of Black property owners, the Haitian-born Joseph Martinez and New Orleans native Louise Baquié, Black Catholic Messenger reported. The new Pontiff was born Robert Prevost on Chicago’s South Side. Multiple genealogists, including the Louisiana Creole expert Jari Honora, traced Prevost’s ancestry to the Black community of New Orleans. Martinez’s maternal ancestors lived in the Crescent City before migrating to Chicago in the early 20th century, according to the Black Catholic Messenger. There have been three other Black popes in the history of the Catholic Church. “It’s more complicated than that,” Honora told BCM. “I think that a person can be of Black ancestry or have Black roots, but to identify as Black, I think, is all about the lived experience. According to Holy See press director Matteo Bruni, the name Pope Leo XIV was chosen in reference to the pioneering Leo XIII, who reigned in the late 19th century. He steered the Church toward its teachings on justice and labor with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, an enduring text that continues to form a baseline for Catholic social teaching. Capital and Labor is an encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII on 15 May 1891. It is an open letter, passed to all Catholic patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops, that addresses the condition of the working classes. A member of a religious order named for the famous African saint Augustine of Hippo, Pope Leo XIV is also the first Roman pontiff of African ancestry since Pope St. Gelasius I, who died in 496 and was of Berber origin. Born in 1955, Prevost was raised on the South Side of Chicago and ordained for the Augustinians in 1982. He then earned a doctorate in canon law at the Angelicum in Rome before embarking on a decade-plus stint in Peru, where he embedded himself in the community and became a beloved local figure. While there, he led an Augustinian seminary and served in the local diocesan chancery. Prevost was elected provincial of the Chicago Augustinians in 1998 and served in the United States briefly before being elected head of the order globally, returning to Rome for 12 years, beginning in 2001. In 2015, Pope Francis named him Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, after a year as apostolic administrator. He later served as a member of two Vatican departments, now known as the Dicastery for the Clergy and the Dicastery for Bishops. He was named the head of the latter in 2023, the same year Francis made him a cardinal. Prior to the 2025 conclave, the largest and perhaps most diverse in history, Prevost was seen as papabile, though not a supremely strong candidate. Reporters had predicted that the Church could return to the Italian tradition for a new pope, or to new voices elsewhere in Western Europe, Asia, or Africa. An American pope was seen as only an outside possibility. |