When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected Pope Leo XIV on May 8, 2025, attention quickly turned to the life and ancestry of the Chicago-born cleric who had become the first U.S.-born pope. Within hours, genealogical research revealed an unexpected connection: his maternal family had deep roots in New Orleans's historic Creole community.
The discovery added a distinctly Louisiana chapter to the biography of the new pontiff. Records examined by genealogists showed that Leo's maternal grandparents, Joseph and Louise Martinez, lived in New Orleans's Seventh Ward, an area closely associated with generations of Creoles of color.
Records Reveal a New Orleans Family Story
Family historian Jari C. Honora of the Historic New Orleans Collection began tracing the pope's maternal ancestry shortly after his election. His research identified Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié Martinez as the parents of Mildred Martinez, Pope Leo XIV's mother.
The 1900 U.S. census recorded Joseph, Louise and members of their household as Black. Joseph was listed as a cigar maker, and the family's home was on North Prieur Street in the Seventh Ward. His birthplace was recorded as "Hayti," an older spelling of Haiti.
Later records demonstrate how difficult historical racial classifications can be to interpret. By the 1910 census, members of the Martinez family were recorded as white, while Joseph's birthplace appeared as Santo Domingo. After the family moved north to Chicago, census records continued to classify them as white.
Honora has described the family's shifting racial classification in the context of the social conditions confronting people of color during the Jim Crow era. Race on historical documents was not always recorded consistently, and families could also change how they identified or were identified as they migrated between communities.
Creole Identity and the Seventh Ward
New Orleans has a particularly complex history of race, ancestry and cultural identity. Before and after the Civil War, the city was home to a substantial population of free people of color and to families whose ancestry could include African, European, Caribbean and Native American roots.
The term "Creole" itself has carried different meanings over time and cannot be reduced to a single racial category. In the context of Pope Leo's maternal family, researchers have described his ancestors as Louisiana Creoles of color with longstanding connections to the Seventh Ward.
The family's story also reflects the broader pressures of the period. By the beginning of the 20th century, segregation and Jim Crow laws increasingly imposed a rigid racial order throughout the South. For some families of mixed ancestry, migration to northern cities provided economic opportunities as well as an opportunity to enter a different social environment.
According to the Historic New Orleans Collection, Joseph and Louise Martinez left New Orleans for Chicago between about 1910 and 1912. Their daughter Mildred, who later became the pope's mother, was born in Chicago, while her older sisters had been born in New Orleans.
A Direct Link to St. Louis Cathedral
The New Orleans connection extends further back than the pope's grandparents. Researchers from the Archdiocese of New Orleans located sacramental records linking earlier generations of the family to historic Catholic churches in the city.
One particularly significant record concerns Pope Leo XIV's maternal great-grandmother, Eugenie Grambois. Archdiocesan records show that she was baptized at St. Louis Cathedral on January 8, 1840, after being born in December 1838.
The same archival research documented the 1864 marriage of Eugenie Grambois and Ferdinand Baquié, the pope's maternal great-grandparents. Their daughter Louise Baquié later married Joseph Martinez in 1887.
Then-New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond highlighted the family connection during a special Mass at St. Louis Cathedral following Leo's election. For local Catholics, the discovery meant that the newly elected pope's family had received sacraments in the same Catholic community generations earlier.
Questions About Joseph Martinez's Birthplace
One detail initially remained uncertain: the precise birthplace of the pope's maternal grandfather, Joseph Martinez.
Different historical records gave conflicting information. Some listed Haiti, others Louisiana, and the 1910 census listed Santo Domingo. Such inconsistencies are not unusual in historical genealogical records, especially when information was supplied orally or recorded by census workers.
Subsequent research provided additional evidence. In May 2025, Honora said that a birth certificate indicated Joseph Martinez had been born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1864, while both of Joseph's parents were connected to New Orleans. The finding helped clarify an issue that remained unresolved in the first days after Leo's election.
Why the Discovery Resonated in New Orleans
The revelation was particularly meaningful for Black Catholics and members of New Orleans's Creole community, whose history stretches back to the earliest periods of Catholic life in Louisiana.
Some local residents saw the ancestry as another reminder that the history of American Catholicism includes communities whose contributions have sometimes received less national attention.
New Orleans musician and educator Michael White, who was raised Catholic, expressed surprise and happiness at the discovery and said he expected people in the city to support the new pope. Other residents spoke about hoping Leo would eventually visit New Orleans and celebrate Mass at St. Louis Cathedral.
The genealogical findings did not mean that Leo XIV had grown up publicly identifying himself through the New Orleans Creole tradition. His brother John Prevost said in the days after the election that the brothers had considered themselves white and that the family's Creole ancestry had not been a prominent part of their upbringing.
That distinction is important: the historical records document the ancestry of the pope's maternal family, while personal racial and cultural identity can develop differently across generations.
Later, Pope Leo Acknowledged His Diverse Ancestry
At the time the New Orleans research emerged in May 2025, there had been no public statement from Pope Leo XIV himself about the newly documented Creole connection.
Later that year, however, Leo discussed genealogical research into his background during an interview with journalist Elise Ann Allen. He referred to having African roots as part of a broader ancestry that also includes European, Caribbean and Latin American connections.
That later acknowledgment added the pope's own voice to a family history that genealogists had begun reconstructing immediately after his election.
A Family History Spanning New Orleans, Chicago and the Vatican
The surviving census, birth, marriage and baptismal records now provide a clearer picture of the maternal ancestry of Pope Leo XIV. They connect his family to Haiti, New Orleans's Creole community, the city's historic Catholic institutions and, eventually, Chicago, where Robert Francis Prevost was born in 1955.
His election as Pope Leo XIV was formally announced by the Vatican on May 8, 2025. Vatican News recorded the election of Cardinal Prevost and his choice of the name Leo XIV.
For New Orleans, the genealogical discoveries created an unexpected bond with the new pontiff. More broadly, the records illustrate how migration, racial classifications, Catholic faith and family identity changed across generations in the United States.
What began as a genealogist's search shortly after the conclave ultimately revealed that the story of the first U.S.-born pope also runs through the streets, churches and complicated racial history of New Orleans.
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