ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The city of Chicago has been celebrating the first American pope, Leo XIV. That makes sense. Leo was raised on the South Side and roots for the White Sox. But there's another city that's been claiming the pope as their own. Shortly after his election, a genealogist found that Leo has Creole roots in New Orleans that stretch back centuries. Rosemary Westwood, with member station WWNO, takes us to the city where Black Catholics are welcoming Pope Leo of the 7th Ward.
ROSEMARY WESTWOOD, BYLINE: I'm outside St. Peter Claver Church in New Orleans asking people about the new pope. One thing comes up in every conversation.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We call him our cousin.
GABRIELLE EDGERSON: His brothers look like my dad's side of the family. And she woke up saying, the pope's your cousin. The pope's your cousin.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I'm wondering if I'm related to the pope.
WESTWOOD: It's not just the people in the pews, even on a text thread for young, Black priests, one had the same question.
AJANI GIBSON: He started doing some digging. And it's like, wait, the pope actually might be my cousin.
WESTWOOD: Father Ajani Gibson is pastor of St. Peter Claver, his childhood church. Gibson says he's seen this sentiment everywhere. The pope is one of us.
AJANI GIBSON: The unique thing about New Orleans folks is this - once they find one connection with you, they claim you as your own. The pope doesn't know anything about this, but the number of cousins that the pope has, all of a sudden, has expanded.
WESTWOOD: The day after Leo's election, Gibson stood on the altar, just a mile from where the pope's maternal grandparents once lived.
AJANI GIBSON: And I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm about to say Leo XIV for the first time, and I got emotional. I was like, I'm praying for this new pope from the United States who has roots in the 7th Ward. That was a mind-blowing moment for me.
WESTWOOD: He says to learn that the pope has Black ancestors feels like a reminder that he, too, belongs in a church where just 4% of Catholics in the United States are Black. Father Tony Ricard is a Creole priest and the director of the Office of Black Catholic Ministries for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
TONY RICARD: So I think, in the Black Catholic community, what we are hoping people will do, especially with a new election of our Holy Father, is recognize that we belong to a church that's universal, but they never said it had to be uniform.
WESTWOOD: Ricard is also the campus minister at St. Augustine, an all-boys Black Catholic high school. One of its graduates is Jari Honora, the genealogist who broke the news in a Facebook post that while the pope's mother was born in Chicago...
JARI HONORA: The six sisters who preceded her and her parents, they were all from New Orleans. And they have roots going back here easily into the 1740s, if not earlier.
WESTWOOD: As late as the 1900 census, he says.
HONORA: Even in some of the birth records for his aunts, they are identified as colored or Black or mulatto, terms like that.
WESTWOOD: Honora found records for Pope Leo's ancestors who were baptized in St. Louis Cathedral over 200 years ago. The oldest baptismal record he's found was dated 1755 for an enslaved woman named Jeanette.
HONORA: And she's one of his ancestors.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WESTWOOD: As mass ends at St. Peter Claver, I spot two women wearing T-shirts with an image of Pope Leo New Orleans style. One is Gabrielle Edgerson.
EDGERSON: It is our beloved Pope Leo of the 7th Ward. He has a nice little second line umbrella, got his feathers, holding a bowl of red beans and rice.
WESTWOOD: Veronique Dorsey says she hopes the pope's Black lineage will broaden the church's appeal.
VERONIQUE DORSEY: I hope it will mean more people feel included in the church and, you know, see themselves in Pope Leo.
WESTWOOD: Gibson has a similar hope that those who feel a new closeness to Leo will also become closer to their own faith.
AJANI GIBSON: All right, y'all. We want to be cousins. Y'all better come to the church.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WESTWOOD: And if the pope does visit New Orleans one day, the red carpet and the second line will be ready.
For NPR News, I'm Rosemary Westwood in New Orleans. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
