Pope Leo XIV Wednesday acknowledged his family’s roots in both slavery and immigration, saying in an interview with NBC News “I come from a family that my grandparents were immigrants … [and] on my mother’s side, we have people who were both slaves and slave owners.”
Pope Leo is the first Black pope, first American pope and now the first pope to acknowledge a familial connection to the Atlantic Slave Trade – and almost certainly the first to have had ancestors who likely came to the Americas via the Middle Passage.
Although he was born in Chicago, the Holy Father has deep roots in New Orleans’ Creole community. His grandparents, Joseph and Louise Martinez, were originally from the 7th Ward before moving to Chicago sometime between 1910 and 1912, according to research done by the Historic New Orleans Collection…