Pope Leo’s Creole carrots evoke a sense of connection by some Catholics in color

When Pope Leo XIV came on Thursday on the balcony of the Basilica of St. Peter on Thursday, the Reverend Lawrence Ndlovu of Johannesburg could not help but ask the shadow of his skin.

“You are not the classic white kind of person,” said father Ndlovu that he had thought while he looked from South Africa. “But I couldn’t find out, what are you?”

The revelation that Pope Leo comes from Creole people of color from New OrleansIncluding some with potential ties with the Caribbean, father Ndlovu and other Catholics have raised around the world, in particular those in Africa and other places with deep African descent. Several have said that they saw him as one of them – someone with whom they can better relate to and who can defend their causes.

“He’s not strange to us,” said Father Ndlovu. “There is part of him that we are too.”

There is some uncertainty about Leo’s racial descent.

Various records mentioned the birthplace of his grandfather as the Dominican Republic, “Hayti” or Louisiana and describe his mother’s grandparents as black or mulat. They once lived in the seventh department in New Orleans, an area that is a traditional Catholic and a melting pot of people with African, Caribbean and European roots.

Edwin Espinal Hernández, the director of the Law School and a genealogist at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre Y Maestra in the Dominican Republic, said that he and other experts had found some indications that the Pope’s grandfather was born in Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

Leo’s brother John Prevost, who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, said that the family does not identify itself as black.

But that has not prevented some people to embrace him as being of African descent.

Robson Querino do Nascimento, a ecclesiastical maintenance employee in Rio de Janeiro, said that he believed that the ancestors of the new pope did him earlier to improve the plight of black and poor people.

More than half of the population in Brazil identifies itself as a black or mixed race, and the long history of slavery of the country means that racial identities are often complex.

“He knows what human suffering looks like,” said the Lord Nascimento, 52,. “Because there are also people of color in his family.”

Leo’s origin brought a sense of convenience to some South Africans who had feared that he might be President Trump and that his selection represented a consolidation of American power, said Father Ndlovu, who runs the most important Catholic Cathedral in Johannesburg.

In Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, many Catholics had hoped that their archbishop, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, would become pope and to map a new course for the church in Africa, where it grows faster than somewhere else. But some saw Leo as the background to represent African interests, said the Reverend Léonard Santedi, the Chancellor of the Catholic University of Congo.

“Given his multicultural background,” said Father Santedi, “we also hope it will help him embrace and represent global diversity.”

Reporting was contributed by Ana Ionova from Rio de Janeiro, Frances Robles From Florida, Jack Buunda from Kinshasa, Lynsey Chutel from London and Ruth Maclean.