by Marie Thérèse Belisle-Nweke
Friday, May 16, 2025
The recent spectacle of Rome bidding goodbye to one pope and welcoming another was undoubtedly moving and historic for millions of Catholics throughout the world. It was also a lesson in efficiency, organization, tradition, pomp and pageantry, showcasing the global significance of the Roman Catholic Church, which, non-Catholic as I am, has always intrigued me. Hence, one of my favourite TV channels is the Catholic EWTN, where an array of some of the most erudite Christian scholars and theologians are usually on hand to inform and educate.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the world. It is almost 2000 years old, and is the oldest, continuously functioning international institution in the Western world, with a membership of 1.4 billion people. Currently, its largest rate of growth is in Africa and Asia.
Succeeding the late Pope Francis, was Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago in 1955. This new pope became a priest of the Augustinian Order in 1982; served as a former missionary in Peru; became Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru; was the elected provincial of the Chicago Augustinians; was the elected head of the Augustinian Order globally; and became an apostolic administrator as a member of two Vatican departments, known as the Dicastery for the Clergy and the Dicastery for Bishops. He was made a cardinal in 2023 by his mentor, Pope Francis. Leo’s first degree is in Mathematics, which he got before he decided to become a priest; and he holds a doctorate in canon law, which he taught in various seminaries in Peru and Italy. While this pope is no polyglot quite of the stature of Pope John Paul II, who is the pope who spoke the most languages, namely, his native Polish, as well as German, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Latin; the current pope is fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese, and has a working knowledge of German and Latin.
One of the most striking aspects of the new Papal Father is that he is being claimed by various groups of people, who all insist that he is theirs. First are the Americans, who lead the way by declaring that he is the first American pope, with many of them shouting, “USA! USA! USA!” at St. Peter’s Square in Rome, immediately after his ascension to the Papal Stool was announced. From former presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden, an Irish-American Catholic, to the current incumbent Donald J. Trump, who describes himself as a non-denominational Christian, and his vice-president, J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert—they all regard his election to the highest office in the Catholic Church as an American triumph and historic feat. Barack Obama even further honed into this, stating that he and his wife, Michelle, perceive his election as the victory of a “fellow Chicagoan.”
However, in faraway Peru, when this former priest from Southside Chicago, who had spent almost two decades as a missionary and later as a bishop, working mainly in Chiclayo, a northern Peruvian diocese, and in 2015 naturalized as a Peruvian, became the Pope, the Peruvian nation erupted in joy. Peru regarded this achievement of Leo’s as the greatest honour that was given to their “son”. Peru’s president, Dina Ercilia Boluarte Zegarra, and her entire government, not only celebrated his election, but described him as a pastor “who loved Peru and now guides the universal church.”
In Peru, over 90 percent of its population identify as Christian, and almost three quarters as Catholic.
However, according to the Pew Research Center, in Leo’s American birthplace, while Catholic numbers are constant, with 53 million people being church members, white membership has decreased by 10 percent, while that of Hispanics increased by 7 percent. Notwithstanding this, within the last decade or so, Hispanics living in the U.S. are now becoming less religious, and the percentage of those identifying as Christian has dropped between 2010 and 2023 from 67 percent to 46 percent.
Also laying claim to Leo XIV are Black Catholics. They declare that he is the first pope of African descent since Pope St. Gelasius I, who was a Berber, died in 496. Berbers are an African ethnic group indigenous to North Africa. St. Augustine of Hippo, which is a town in North Africa, and the bishop on whom the Augustinian Order is named, was a Berber, though European artists often portray him as white. Augustine was a highly revered philosopher and a learnéd church father, who famously enunciated the doctrine of suicide. Other church fathers like St. Thomas Aquinas similarly regarded suicide as a mortal sin.
Several genealogists, using US census records, as well as birth and death records of Leo XIV’s family, have traced his ancestry not only to the Black community of New Orleans, but also to Haiti, which, prior to the Haitian Revolution which led to Haiti’s independence from France, used to be known as St. Domingue. The Pope’s mother, Mildred Martinez, was the daughter of Black property owners, Haitian-born Joseph Martinez, and his wife, Louise Baquié, a Creole woman and a native of New Orleans. It is also a fact that Leo XIV’s mixed heritage also includes French, Italian and Spanish ancestors.
When his family left southern New Orleans and moved to northern Chicago in the early 20th century, they became “white”. This was a strategy for economic and social survival that most light-skinned Blacks of mixed racial identities in the U.S., who could “pass” for white, often adopted.
Unlike the Spanish colonizers who had created fine gradations in Black/white ethnicity, ranging from mulatto, which is half Black and half white, to quadroon, terceron, and quintoon to octoroon, which is one eighth black and seven eighth white, the Americans gave short shrift to meticulous measurements to sustain discrimination, or determine rights. Instead, they created the “one drop” rule, whereby, one drop of “black” blood determined “blackness”, irrespective of how white a person looked.
This was why three of President Thomas Jefferson’s four children of mixed-race identity decided, after they had left Jefferson’s Monticello plantation, to pass as white. They chose economic and social survival in the face of the harsh and racist environment of America. These were four of the six children surviving adulthood which Jefferson had had with his favourite slave, Sally Hemings, who was 28 years younger than Jefferson and had her first child with him at 16. Incidentally, Sally was one quarter Black (quadroon) and three quarters white. She was also the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife, who was his cousin, and the widowed daughter of a slave owner, like himself.
The descendants of those three Jefferson children are now lost to history. Hence, today, the only proven descendants via DNA of Thomas Jefferson—one of America’s Founding Fathers, and the man who first formulated the American Declaration of Independence—are those from his wife’s two daughters, and the only son of Sally Hemings who chose not to become “white”.
Nor is Mother Africa left out of the large group of those claiming this Pope. There is a wave of great fervour and excitement currently streaming throughout the African continent at Leo’s papacy. This is not only because he has visited Africa several times, but he has been to countries as diverse as Kenya in the east and Nigeria in the west.
Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of the Abuja Archdiocese in Nigeria recently expressed his enthusiasm for Leo, highlighting the Pope’s extensive leadership experience and his prior visits to various parts of Africa, especially Nigeria. His first Nigerian visit was in 2016 to participate in the General Chapter of the Order of St. Augustine. In Belize, the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, tend to dominate the Catholic priestly orders there. However, in Nigeria there are orders such as the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, the Claretian Fathers, the Holy Ghost Fathers, the Oblates of Joseph, the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, as well as the ubiquitous Jesuits.
Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, the Bishop of Sokoto, is an ardent supporter of the new Pope. His diocese is in Northern Nigeria, where thousands of Christians have been persecuted and killed for their faith, and churches burnt and destroyed by Islamic fundamentalist groups; and where Sharia or Islamic Law is observed by 12 state governments, in defiance of Nigeria’s constitutional secular status. U.S. officials have openly denounced these atrocities done in the name of religion. Bishop Kukah, who is a vocal critic of corruption, oppression and delinquent governance, is optimistic that Leo will be a strong advocate in addressing issues of “domination, discrimination, and exploitation”. African bishops are all relying on Pope Leo to address the challenges faced by the Catholic community across Africa, and the many needs of the continent.
Other claimants to Leo are Christians who live in what is known as “the Holy Land”. Due to their special relationship with his predecessor and mentor, Pope Francis, who established key Christian institutions in the Holy Land, such as the Benedictus Centre in Nazareth, Bethlehem University and the Pontifical Mission in Jerusalem, they currently see Leo as their papal “saviour”. They want Leo to intervene by supporting Christian institutions which are operating under Zionist control. They cite an oppressive situation where Jewish municipalities violate previous agreements with them by imposing crushing taxes, discriminating against Christian schools by deliberately starving them of funds, and violating church property. Christians are at time spat on in the streets of Tel Aviv by Jewish zealots. Catholics driven in 1951 from their homes, which were later destroyed by the Israelis, say that they are ignoring their demand to return to these ancestral lands, and hope the Holy See can intervene and bring them succour.
Pope Leo himself describes his appointment as a “Cross” and a “Blessing”. And, he is not wrong. Although he has ties to the U.S., South America, Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa, he, as well as his two brothers, who both live in Chicago, clearly identify as white, and American. In a 2023 interview with the BBC, he proudly states: “… I’ve been a missionary my whole life and I was working in Peru, but I am American …”. Yet, from his behaviour and pastoral record, Pope Leo XIV is not xenophobic.
He also states that, because of his identity and his continued strong ties with the Catholic Church in the U.S., via his constant visits to the churches in Chicago even when he lived in Peru and Rome, this will undoubtedly help him to navigate the challenges faced by the Catholic Church in the U.S. Some of these include deep divisions in the church regarding LGBTQ+, gender theory and sex change issues, the historic sexual abuse not only in America, but globally, against nuns, as well as members of the laity, including children. Other problems are the treatment of immigrants, flawed deportations, the Trump government halting funding for refugee resettlement, and the issue of female priests.
Regarding the ordination of women, which he was fully against during the Synod on Synodality in October 2023, Leo said this would create more problems than solutions. But he conceded the need for greater inclusion of women in the church in higher leadership roles, because of their valuable contributions in the life of the Church. On climate change and its disproportionate impact on Third World nations, especially tiny island states, Leo has always insisted that the Church has to take far more decisive actions against the destruction of Planet Earth. Last November, at a related seminar, he stated: “Dominion over nature should not be tyrannical”, and insisted that there is need for a more reciprocal relationship with our planet.
In 2012, a statement credited to him by the New York Times on LGBTQ+ issues, indicated that he found it dismaying the way the media and pop culture expressed “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel”. It is also noteworthy that those who worked closely with Leo in Peru have told media organizations such as Reuters that he cared deeply about migrants, and showed this in practical ways for the more than 1.5 million Venezuelan immigrants who had fled to Peru due to the economic downturn in Venezuela.
Regarding this Pope, who in my view in key respects is “the Pope of the Americas”, rather than “the American Pope”, I shall give the last word to the Columbian president, Gustavo Petro, who said on his social media account, X, that Robert Francis Prevost is “more than an American”. And, he added: “I hope he becomes a great leader for migrants around the world, and I hope he lifts up our Latino migrant brothers and sisters who are currently being humiliated by the U.S. … May he help build the great force of humanity that defends life, and defeat the greed that has caused the climate crisis and the extinction of living things.”
Indeed, as Leo follows in the steps of St. Peter, “the Big Fisherman”, who founded the Church in Antioch as well as the Church in Rome, who was said to have insisted that he be crucified upside down, as he was unworthy to be crucified exactly in the same way as Christ, may Leo XIV be the Pope of all faithful Catholics wherever they live. They may be Black, white, or in-between; and not just those of a specific ethnic or racial group, ideological persuasion, nation or region.
*The writer of this article lives in Lagos, Nigeria.