Pope Leo’s Creole heritage highlights complex history of racism and the church in America Then-Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, celebrates Mass at St. Jude Parish in New Lenox, Ill ...

Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first mass less than 24 hours after being elected the leader of the Catholic Church. He's not only the first pontiff from the U.S., but also the first Augustinian friar ...

Had Pope Leo XIV been African, he would have been described as such, and his race would have been assumed, unless he came from South Africa. But coming from the multiracial, multiethnic U.S., his ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just over a month after Pope Leo XIV became the first U.S.-born pontiff in the history of the Catholic Church, a new poll shows that American Catholics are excited about their ...

All four of Pope Leo XIV’s maternal great-grandparents were “free people of color” in Louisiana, based on 19th century census records, Honora found. As part of the melting pot of French ...

All four of Pope Leo XIV's maternal great-grandparents were "free people of color" in Louisiana based on 19th-century census records, Honora found.

The pope’s grandparents migrated to Chicago around 1910, like many other African American families leaving the racial oppression of the Deep South, and “passed for white,” Honora said.

Pope Leo XIV's Creole heritage highlights complex history of racism and the church in America Cardinal Robert Prevost celebrates Mass at St. Jude Parish in New Lenox, Ill., in 2024.

The pope’s grandparents’ old home in New Orleans was later destroyed, along with hundreds of others, to build a highway overpass that “eviscerated” a stretch of the largely Black ...