Prevost's Italian roots between Piedmont and Liguria
From the family tree, its roots emerge in a large slice of the Old Continent and then in the United States.
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Key points
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Leo XIV is an American Pope but with European blood. From the family tree, his roots emerge in a large slice of the Old Continent to land in the United States. A contamination of cultures and histories that crosses Italy, France and Spain.
Ligurian great-grandfather
.Prevost's direct descendants come from Louisiana, in the south-east of the North American continent. There, his great-grandfather, Jacques Martino, arrived from Italy and in particular from Liguria. The man, in fact, was born in San Remo in 1806 and then decided to emigrate. He settled in New Orleans where he died in 1852. His wife Martuerite Cadeneth was originally from East Feliciana, also in the state of Louisiana.
Grandma with French roots
.In 1864 Joseph Martinez, the grandfather of Pope Leo, was born. In 1910, the man moved to Chicago, Illinois. His wife, Suzanne Fontaine, on the other hand, is the daughter of pastry chefs of French descent, originally from Normandy. The Pope's grandmother was born in Le Havre, the French port on the Atlantic, in 1894 and died in the USA, in Detroit, in 1979.
Piedmontese blood in the family
.Leo XIV's father is Louis Prevost: born in 1920, he graduated from Central Ymca College in 1943 and enlisted in the US Army during World War II. During the conflict he served as a lieutenant on board a ship in the Mediterranean. He worked as superintendent of schools in the southern suburbs of Chicago and died in 1997. The surname Prevost is found in parts of France and also in the northwest quadrant of Italy. This suggests that there may also be Piedmontese blood running in the family of the new Pope, which refers in particular to the town of Settimo Rottaro.
The mother of Spanish origin
.The Pontiff's mother is Mildred Martinez of Spanish and Creole descent. The Pope's maternal grandparents resided in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans, a neighbourhood historically inhabited by blacks, before moving to Chicago where Mildred was born. She studied librarianship at DePaul University and graduated in 1947, at the age of 34.
