The family history service Ancestry recently announced that a team helmed by senior genealogist Kyle Betit had determined Leo’s paternal grandfather, John R Prevost, immigrated to the US from north-eastern Sicily.
That revelation came as Leo used his first address to world diplomats on Friday to say that migrants’ dignity must be respected.
“My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate,” Leo told ambassadors at the Vatican.
Louis and Mildred Prevost raised three sons within the Catholic faith in Chicago, the youngest of whom was Robert.
It is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God.” Vance was scheduled to lead a delegation of US officials at Leo’s inaugural mass on Sunday.
Since Leo XIV was recently elected as the first American to lead the Roman Catholic church, there has been mounting evidence that the bloodlines of the Chicago-born pope reflect the United States’ immigration legacy and complex relationship with race.
Leo’s paternal grandfather, John R. Prevost, emigrated to the United States from northeastern Sicily, according to a team led by senior genealogist Kyle Betit, according to a recent announcement from the family history service Ancestry.
During his first speech to international diplomats on Friday, Leo made the revelation that migrants’ dignity must be upheld. According to some interpretations, Leo might be open to opposing the Donald Trump White House’s policies, which aim to impose stricter restrictions on immigration to the United States in general.
“I am a citizen who is descended from immigrants and decided to emigrate,” Leo told ambassadors at the Vatican.
A form that Prevost, who was then living in Chicago, had to fill out in 1940 because he was a foreign national and had not yet obtained US citizenship revealed some of the details of Leo’s Sicilian ancestry.
Prevost was born on June 24, 1876, in Milazzo, a province of Messina, Italy, and was given the name Salvatore Giovanni Gaetano Riggitano, according to the form and other pertinent bloodline documents. He was one of about 4 million Italians, mostly Sicilians like Riggitano, who migrated to the US between 1880 and 1915 in an attempt to escape poverty, political unrest, and other hardships, according to the document, which also mentioned his arrival in New York on the steamship Perugia in May 1903.
In the end, Riggitano took his wife’s surname, Suzanne Prevost, as his own and anglicized the first name that had been given to him at birth to John. He was a French, Spanish, and Italian teacher. His resume, newspaper ads and articles, birth certificates, and census data, all of which were examined by Utah-based Ancestry, indicate that he eventually resided in Chicago with his wife and family.
According to Betit, Louis Marius, a son of the Prevosts, eventually wed Mildred Agnes Martinez.
It is clear that Joseph, Mildred’s father, was born on the island that is home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Furthermore, according to other genealogists, Joseph briefly resided with Mildred’s mother, Louise, in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward, a stronghold for Creole residents—a term used there to refer to people of mixed race.
At one point, the future pope’s maternal grandparents, the Martinezes, identified as Black. But by 1920, when racial oppression was widespread and frequently violent in the US South (and the federal supreme court of the country had not yet declared it unconstitutional), the Martinezes had relocated to Chicago in the north. They also changed their racial identity to white, just like other families in the US in similar circumstances.
Robert was the youngest of Louis and Mildred Prevost’s three sons, who were brought up in Chicago as Catholics. After being ordained as a priest in 1982, Robert Prevost led a diocese in Peru, rose to the position of global leader of the Catholic religious order known as the Augustinians, was appointed a cardinal by Pope Francis in September 2023, and oversaw the Vatican body responsible for choosing new bishops worldwide.
Leo was elected to succeed the late Francis as head of the global Catholic church and its 11.4 billion members on May 8, following a two-day conclave in Rome, roughly 460 miles from his paternal grandfather’s native Italy.
Betit stated in a statement that “we frequently see parallels between the past and the present.”. In the instance of the new pope, his grandfather traveled to America from Italy and returned to Italy as pope. “”.
Trump, who won a second US presidency in November largely on the promise of mass deportations, fought his predecessor on immigration issues on a regular basis.
In fact, repeated reports of detentions and removals in the US related to immigration have characterized the first few months of Trump’s second term as president. The Supreme Court actually rejected his administration’s attempt to resume deporting Venezuelans under a wartime law from the 18th century on Friday.
Prior to his appointment as pope, Robert Prevost, a cardinal, took to social media to repost an opinion piece that criticized Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, for claiming that Catholic teachings advocated caring for one’s own people before looking to others.
“All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, but our dignity always remains unchanged,” he added in his speech to ambassadors on Friday at the Vatican. It is a creature’s dignity that God has willed and loves. “”.
At Leo’s inaugural mass on Sunday, Vance was supposed to be in charge of a group of US officials.
