Pope Leo XIV also has Creole origins
from New Orleans, the New York Times said Friday of the new
pontiff who was already known to be of French, Spanish and
Italian heritage.
Chicago-born former Cardinal Robert Prevost, the first North
American Pope, reportedly has Creole ancestors from New Orleans,
the Gray Lady reported.
Leo's maternal grandparents, in fact, lived in the Seventh
District of the Louisiana city, a traditionally Catholic area
and a melting pot of people with African, Caribbean and European
roots, said the NYT.
Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié moved to Chicago at the
beginning of the 20th century and had a daughter: Mildred
Martinez, the Pope's mother.
The discovery means that Leo XIV is not only the first pontiff
born in the United States, but also comes from a family that has
fully within it the complex and rich fabric of American history,
said the US paper of record.
The pope's grandmother was "the daughter of pastry chefs" in
Normandy, according to the newspaper Ouest-France, citing the
Revue française de généalogie.
Suzanne Fontaine, the newspaper specifies, was the paternal
grandmother of Robert Francis Prevost.
The woman was born in Le Havre, the French port overlooking the
Atlantic (department of Seine-Maritime), in 1894.
She died in the USA in 1979.
Her two parents, the great-grandparents of Leo XIV, are both
Norman.
Ouest-France bases its article on information collected by the
'Revue française de généalogie' (French magazine of genealogy)
which attempts to reconstruct the multiple origins of the new
American Pope, but with a lot of European blood, with ancestors
in France, Italy and Spain.
Suzanne's father, Ernest, continues Ouest-France, citing the
French Genealogy Review, was born on September 17, 1857 in
Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, a former town of over 3,500 inhabitants
located in the department of Calvados, in Normandy. "His roots
were all in Calvados, with some ramifications in the Manche
(Guilberville) and the Orne (Domfront)," the French magazine
points out, before adding that Suzanne's mother, Eugénie, was
born in Paris, "daughter of a Norman from the Pays de Caux".
As for their activity, writes Ouest-France, "Ernest and Eugénie,
it seems, were pastry chefs in Le Havre". Suzanne Fontaine died
on October 10, 1979 in Detroit (Michigan), in the USA.
The French newspaper points out that Leo XIV's paternal
grandfather, Jean Prevost, was born "in Italy in 1876 and was a
professor of Romance languages ;;in Illinois.
He died in 1960.
"To find out if the Pope feels close to his French origins," the
newspaper finally suggests asking him directly.
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