This is like a reward from God,” a local parishioner said, as researchers unearthed more details about the lives of Leo XIV’s ancestors in the heart of the city’s Afro-Caribbean culture.

The pope's maternal grandparents are described as Black or a person of mixed white and Black ancestry in historical documents dug up by New Orleans-based genealogist Jari Honora.

Census records for Leo's maternal grandparents hint at the complexity of Creole identity and of Black identity in America.