In New Orleans, Black Catholics say Pope Leo’s Creole roots make him ‘a gumbo pope for a gumbo church’

NEW ORLEANS — The Rev. R. Tony Ricard was at St. Augustine High School on May 8 when images of white smoke from Rome appeared on screens around the world to reveal that a new pope had been named. As he watched Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost emerge from the Vatican to wave to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Ricard said, “That dude looks like he could be my brother.”

Ricard, who is Creole and directs the office of Black Catholic Ministries for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, also found himself mulling over the new pope’s French surname: “We have a lot of Prevost family members here in New Orleans. I went to school with Prevosts.”

Hours later, a New Orleans-based genealogist confirmed Ricard’s hunch about Pope Leo’s ancestry. Jari C. Honara, a family historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection, announced on Facebook that Prevost is a descendant of Creoles of color from New Orleans’ historically Creole Seventh Ward neighborhood.

The pope’s maternal grandmother was born in New Orleans, his maternal grandfather was born in Haiti. They both were considered mulatto or Black — as were their parents, according to historical records. Creole isn’t a racial but a cultural designation — referring to those with deep roots in New Orleans as well as ties to Catholicism.

“It highlights the heritage of faith that has always existed in the Creole of color community, and all of the contributions that we have made to the church over the centuries,” said Honara, who is also Creole. “I hope that that will be highlighted even further as the months and the years go on.”

Suddenly, Pope Leo became more than just the first American pope who happens to hail from Chicago. To many, he also became known as the first Creole Pope.

Although the pope — who took the name Pope Leo XIV — hasn’t spoken publicly about his heritage, people in New Orleans, particularly Black Catholics, are eager to claim him.

“Everybody in New Orleans now is saying, ‘Oh, he my cousin,’” Ricard told me. “He might be my fifth cousin or my 18th cousin and who knows? But we’re still cousins.’”

It’s unclear what, if anything, this surprising discovery means to Leo. However, his chosen namesake, Pope Leo XIII, may offer a clue. Pope Leo XIII was the first in his position to condemn slavery, a practice that the Catholic Church embraced with its participation in the transatlantic slave trade and by allowing priests to hold enslaved people captive.

I hope Pope Leo will speak out about his newfound lineage sooner rather than later.

Acknowledging his ancestral racial history would be a small but significant step in alleviating a deep hunger, not just in the Creole community of New Orleans but in people of color around the United States and across the globe, to see themselves reflected at the highest level in the Catholic Church.

It’s unconscionable that in modern history at least, every pope — except Leo, and his predecessor, Francis — has been European. The new pope’s mixed-race ancestry will offer Black Catholics an opportunity to no longer be “anonymous,” as the late Cyprian Davis, a Benedictine monk, wrote in The History of Black Catholics in the United States.

“I’m praying that this revelation helps him have a greater understanding of who he is to the world,” Ricard told me. “One good thing about being in the Creole community in New Orleans, we know that, like gumbo, we are a little bit of everything.”

“Everybody in New Orleans now is saying, ‘Oh, he my cousin.’”

Then he added, “There’s a mixture in him, that makes him relatable to everybody.”

I got that feeling last month when I spent several days in New Orleans, a diverse, heavily Catholic city famous for its gumbo, a soup-like stew made of any combination of seafood, sausage, chicken, and vegetables. I sampled some in the French Quarter and also talked to everyone from academics to churchgoers about the new pope and their hopes for the church under its new leadership.

During Sunday Mass at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church, Ricard really broke it down about what having a pope of color means for Black Catholics.

“We don’t have to ask, ‘Can we come inside?’ We are inside and sitting at the biggest table in the grown-folks section,” he preached from the pulpit. “After this, can’t nobody tell us that we don’t belong. We’ve been a part of the holy Catholic Church since the days of the Apostles and now the world can see it.”

Ricard added, “We have a gumbo pope for a gumbo church.”

In other words, he’s not one thing — he’s some of this and some of that, just like the followers of the Catholic Church.

That resonates deeply with Black people whose involvement in Catholicism dates back to the church’s early days but have too often been marginalized. “Our churches are closing. Our schools are closing,” Kathleen Dorsey Bellow, the director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University, told me. “We have fewer Black bishops, Black religious, Black clergy. They are dying young.”

She added, “A lot of it has to do with the stress of serving a Catholic Church that does not always hold Black Catholics in high esteem, does not engage us in leadership, does not promote the gifts that we bring to the church. So there’s an awful lot of work that needs to be done to bring Black Catholicism fully into the U.S. Catholic Church, where we can bring our point of view.”

Bellow described a desire by Black Catholics to incorporate more of their cultural traditions into the liturgy. “A lot of things we do come from ancient Roman culture,” she pointed out. “They don’t necessarily fit with our African American spirituality.”

As she spoke, my eyes wandered to images on a wall of six Black U.S. candidates for sainthood. I was most familiar with Henriette Delille, a free woman of color, who in 1842 cofounded an order of Black religious women back when white orders wouldn’t allow them to become sisters.

Named a Servant of God by the church in 1988 (the first step in the cause of sainthood), Delille is a descendant of enslaved workers and she, along with the six other African Americans on the path to sainthood, could become the first U.S. African American saint recognized by the Catholic Church.

If it ever gets around to it. The Catholic Church recognizes around 10,000 saints but none of them are African Americans from the U.S. — a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

“To me the Catholic Church has a lot to clean up,” said Dianne “Gumbo Marie” Honore, an eighth-generation Louisiana Creole, when I caught up with her at New Orleans City Park. “We have a lot to make up for.”

She talked about the church’s long history of racism, as well as its child sex abuse scandals and the damage that each has caused.

“It is going to take more than just the pope,” said Honore, a Creole culture activist and historic interpreter. “But he can set out certain directives and he can start the ball rolling.”

Pope Leo has already seemed to embrace his Windy City roots. He is scheduled to make a video address during a Mass in his honor in Chicago on June 14.

Meanwhile, New Orleans residents can’t wait to welcome him, preferably with a second line and a bowl of gumbo.

After all, as Sister Alicia Costa, the congregational leader of the Sisters of the Holy Family cofounded by Delille, pointed out during my visit, “He has really riled up this city.”