Pope Leo XIV to trace back French ancestry, spiritual roots on visit to France

The first American pope arrives in Paris on Friday for the start of a four-day trip to France that will feature popemobile parades, an open-air Mass on the Champs-Élysées and a visit to the Sanctuary of Lourdes.

The trip – the first papal state visit since 2008 – is being labelled in France as a homecoming for the Chicago-born pontiff, more than a century after his grandmother left her native Normandy to build a life in the US – and eight decades after his father took part in the D-Day landings.

It will include a visit to Metz in eastern Lorraine, the home region of a 17th-century monk Leo XIV has described as a spiritual mentor, where he will plead for peace in Europe and meet with other faith leaders.

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“Leo – Robert Prevost before his election as pope – has French connections on both sides of his family tree,” says Christopher White, associate director at Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, and the author of “Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy”.

“His surname comes from his French great-grandmother on his father’s side, who was born in Normandy,” adds White. “On his mother’s side, he has both French Canadian and French Caribbean lineage.”

The Pope is, in fact, 40 percent French, according to the genealogy website Geneanet.

“From a genealogical point of view, he is predominantly French,” the website adds. “His roots, on both his father’s and mother’s sides, can indeed be traced back to France.”

Norman origins

A French birth certificate drawn up in Le Havre states that Leo’s grandmother Suzanne Louise Marie Fontaine was born on February 2, 1894, the daughter of Ernest Auguste Fontaine, a pastry chef’s assistant, and Jeanne Eugénie Prévost.

Suzanne emigrated to the United States in 1915, during World War I, bound for New York. Shortly after her arrival, she fell in love with a Sicilian man who was already married – he too had recently arrived in America – named Salvatore Riggitano.

The couple had two sons, but they were unable to take their father’s surname owing to their illegitimate status. Instead, they were named after their maternal grandmother: Prevost.

One of the two boys, Louis Marius Prevost, born in 1920, was the father of the future pope. He served in the US Navy during World War II, returning to his ancestors’ Normandy coast during the D-Day landings in June 1944. He also took part in the Provence landings a few weeks later and had attained the rank of lieutenant by the end of the war.

A generation after Suzanne’s arrival in the US, French was still spoken within the family. The future pope’s uncle, Jean Prévost, taught the language and published a study on Dandyism in France between 1817 and 1839. However, this French culture was not passed on to the following generation.

“The pope’s French is quite poor, even though he is now actively studying the language,” notes Martin Dumont, secretary-general of the Research Institute for the Study of Religions (Irer), part of Sorbonne University in Paris.

White says Leo XIV has shown great interest in his family history since becoming pope.

“At a lunch at the Vatican a few days after his election as pope, he said to the French publisher Marc Leboucher (co-author of a biography of the pope): ‘You'll be able to tell me about my grandfather's origins!’ And then several months later, he met with American historian Robert Louis Gates to better understand his genealogy,” he says.

A rare visitor

Despite this growing interest, the 71-year-old Pope has seldom visited his grandmother’s native country.

“He visited Lourdes twice on pilgrimage: at the age of 19, when he was a student, and again aged 29, when he was a very young priest,” says Dumont, who is publishing a book on two centuries of papal discourse about France, under the French title “La France dans la pensée des papes” (Papal thoughts and views on France).

One of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes will host the pontiff on Saturday and Sunday. The hallowed site holds “a special place in the hearts of all popes”, says Dumont.

“The faithful come here seeking peace and consolation. There is an element of popular piety that is of paramount importance to Leo XIV,” he explains. “It is true that the pope could have returned on other occasions, but geographical distance got in the way.”

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Robert Prevost was ordained a priest in the Order of Saint Augustine in 1982 in Rome, but he did not remain in Europe for long. He worked for over 20 years as a missionary in Peru, where he obtained citizenship. It was only during his predecessor’s pontificate that he had the opportunity to return to France.

“In 2023, Pope Francis appointed him as prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops, responsible for episcopal appointments worldwide,” says Dumont. “It was in this capacity that he accompanied Francis to Marseille in 2023 and to Corsica the following year.”

Leo's bedside reading

While Leo’s family links with France are ultimately tenuous, the French historian argues that the pope’s spiritual ties with French Catholic figures run much deeper.

Shortly after his election in May of last year, the 267th pontiff sent a letter to the bishops of France to mark the centenary of the canonisation of saints Jean Eudes, Jean-Marie Vianney and Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Its aim, says Dumont, was to encourage French Catholics to delve into their religious history and find inspiration for “a new missionary impetus”.

“These French saints speak to the current pope, who was himself a missionary for over 20 years,” he explains.

During his stay in Paris, Leo will follow in the footsteps of one of his spiritual mentors, the 17th-century French monk Lawrence (Laurent) of the Resurrection, whose book “The Practice of the Presence of God” he recently described as his bedside reading.

Originally from Lorraine in eastern France, Brother Lawrence lived in the Carmelite monastery where the Catholic Institute of Paris now stands, and which the pope is due to visit on Saturday. His writings invite Christians to “think of God regularly in their daily life and entrust everything to Him,” says Dumont.

Though largely forgotten in France, the Carmelite friar has long been popular among worshipers in Britain and the United States, where his writings are bestsellers. The pope has described their message as “a type of spirituality where one simply gives his life to the Lord and allows the Lord to lead”.

In Leo’s case, the path has led all the way to the Holy See – and now back to his grandmother’s homeland.

We do not know whether Suzanne Fontaine, who died in Detroit in 1979 at the age of 85, ever returned to France. Her obituary, published in the press, described her as “a loving grandmother” to her three grandchildren: Louis, John and Robert, the future pope.