Pope Leo’s New Orleans Black and white cousins wanr to meet | News

Two generations before his birth, Pope Leo XIV’s New Orleans family splintered along racial lines. On one side, those who were fair-skinned passed for White. The other side continued on as Black.

Most of the family left Louisiana more than a century ago, but according to genealogist Jari Honora, who has been studying the pope’s local ancestry, two branches of the extended family — one Black and one White — stayed in New Orleans. They never met.

Ellen Dionne Alverez, 77, grew up in the 7th Ward and has lived her entire life in the city. When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was chosen as pope last month, word quickly spread through her Black New Orleans family that he might be a cousin. The pope’s grandparents were from New Orleans and had the last name Martinez, which is Alverez’s maiden name.

First, a friend speculated. Then, a niece checked her own family records and said she thought it was possible, too.

Honora confirmed the relation and that’s what convinced Alverez. Pope Leo is her second cousin once removed. Her great-grandfather and the pope’s grandfather were brothers.

“You know, he looks like my grandmother,” Alvarez said about the new pope as she sat in her New Orleans East home on a recent Sunday with Honora and her son.

Malcolm Moore, 70, grew up just a few miles away from Alverez, in Broadmoor.

A lifelong New Orleanian who had always considered himself White, Moore knew he had a priest in his extended family — and had met some of his relatives on that side — but didn’t know the Rev. Bob Prevost well. Moore is also the pope’s second cousin once removed. His great-grandmother and the pope’s grandmother were sisters.

Moore learned a little about his Black ancestry years ago after getting results from a DNA test. The connection to the pope, and to a whole line of extended family members, has him eager to learn more.

“We’re interested in meeting the branch (of the family) that we didn’t even know,” he said.

Crossing the color line

One extended family, separated for decades by just a few miles and the complicated history of race in New Orleans. More than 5,000 miles away in Rome, the election of Pope Leo XIV as the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics has brought their connection to light.

Honora, who first discovered the pope’s family history in New Orleans, said the splintering of families in this way is plenty familiar in Louisiana. Stories of “crossing the color line” were especially common in the early 1900s when the pope’s ancestors made the decision to pass for White, but those choices still reverberate today.

“All of us from New Orleans, we know that we’ve experienced friends, family that, either temporarily or long term, they crossed the color lines,” said Honora, a historian and genealogist at the Historic New Orleans Collection. “Back when the buses and the street cars were segregated, everyone had friends who would sort of sit in the front and you’d think, ‘He shouldn’t be sitting up there, we know who she is.’ But they did it.”

Under the state-sanctioned segregation of Jim Crow, people who decided to pass for White — often known by the French phrase “passé blanc” — were making a difficult choice.

It could mean being forced to leave home and cut ties with family and friends. But for those who could pass successfully, it also meant better treatment, more freedom, safety and greater access to housing and job opportunities.

People often kept the secret from their children, raising them as White, too.

Family ties in New Orleans

In that way, the pope’s family history isn’t that unusual.

In 1900, Leo’s maternal grandparents Louise Baquié and Joseph Martinez lived in the predominately Black 7th Ward of New Orleans, according to U.S. Census records, the same part of the city where Alverez was raised. Martinez was born in Haiti and worked as a cigar maker. Baquié’s roots ran even deeper: her mother was baptized in St. Louis Cathedral.

The couple and their daughters were listed in the 1900 census as Black. But by the 1920 census, the family had moved to Chicago and were living in the north as White.

When the couple moved north, two of Martinez’s three siblings did the same, joining him in Chicago and identifying as White. But one brother, Michel Martinez, stayed behind. His great-granddaughter is Alverez.

When Baquié left with her husband, her sister Victoria Baquié stayed in New Orleans. But she also began to pass for White. Her great-grandson is Moore, who now lives in Destrehan.

Alverez only just learned of the branch of the family connected to the pope. Moore said his mother and grandmother had kept in touch with the pope’s mother and her sisters, who visited New Orleans several times. He spent time with them in Chicago once as a child.

Moore knew of “Father Bob,” his cousin who was a priest and spent years in South America before working at the Vatican. Years ago, his family contributed to the creation of the gold chalice the pope used during his ordination as a priest. Still, never expecting an American pope, even when the announcement came and the name sounded familiar, he almost missed the connection.

“It really didn’t hit me until later, when we were looking at my family genealogy, that he was my cousin,” Moore said.

Now that the family histories have been revealed, Alverez hopes Pope Leo, who likely also never knew of her branch of the family, will eventually come to New Orleans so they can meet.

“What does the pope think about us being related? That’s my question,” she said. “What does he think of us because we’re Afro American?”

She plans to write a letter inviting Leo to her home if he ever visits the city.

Black and White in New Orleans

Moore and Alverez grew up about 5 miles apart. Though one was raised Black and the other White in the 1950s and 1960s, they both said they had happy, devoutly Catholic childhoods surrounded by loved ones.

Both were educated at local Catholic schools and spent years serving in the church. Moore served as an altar boy in his youth, and so did Alverez’s son.

Alverez grew up in the St. Bernard Projects, where she never lacked family.

“My grandmother, she lived on one of the top floors of the building and she would always be looking down and checking on us from there,” she said.

Several family members also lived in the housing project and the kids, who would all get roller skates for Christmas, had the freedom to play together outside, skating around their neighborhood. Most everyone she loved was in arm’s reach.

“I lived my whole life here,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Moore described the Broadmoor he and his four brothers grew up in as “a melting pot.”

Not far away, he would play with some of the Landrieu children, the ones who grew up to be former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. The family in the house next door to Moore had come from Honduras and a few doors down was a Jewish family that had come to America after surviving the Holocaust.

Moore’s father was an electrician but died in an accidental electrocution when Moore was just 3 years old. He said that as a child, he had asked his mother and grandmother about their family heritage. They were always vague. 

Decades ago, the family’s racial history was almost revealed when it was time for Moore’s brother to get married. He had fallen in love with their Jewish neighbor. It was the 1960s and interracial marriage was still illegal in Louisiana.

Though Moore’s brother looked White and was raised as White, his birth certificate, which he had never seen, listed his race as Black. As the wedding approached, his mother had to tell him.

“There was a little controversy there that I was totally oblivious to,” Moore said.

Moore’s brother and his bride eloped in another state where interracial marriage was legal. Then, they returned to New Orleans and had a Jewish wedding ceremony. Moore’s brother and sister-in-law kept the whole thing secret.

Around 2019, Moore and his wife decided to take DNA tests with their adopted children. Moore’s results came back showing he was 14% African with connections in Cameroon and with the Bantu Tribe. That was when his brother’s wife (his brother died in the 1990s) told them about how they were married.

Later, when Moore checked his own birth certificate, he saw that his race had been blotted out and was no longer legible.

“My mother and my grandmother kept it a family secret and never told any of the children,” he said. “In fact, I have African on both sides of my family. … I didn’t know anything about it until I did my DNA and I said, ‘I’ve got a different story now.'”

Catholic, Methodist, Baptist

Though both Alverez and Moore grew up Catholic, Alverez is now Baptist and Moore is now Methodist.

Both said they still hold their Catholic upbringing dear and have reverence for the church. Moore said he was attracted to the Methodist faith for its focus on an individual’s direct relationship with God. Alverez said after her mother’s death, soul searching for greater meaning in her life brought her to Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, where she has been a member for many years.

Alverez still remembers attending a massive Mass on the Lakefront almost 40 years ago when Pope John Paul II visited New Orleans. 

“It stormed and stormed and then when the pope arrived, the skies cleared and the sun came out,” said Alverez. “I will never forget that.”

Now, with a pope with real ties to the city, she said she’s sure the turnout would be even greater if Leo visited. 

The Rev. Blaise Polk, Alverez’s cousin, who is also a cousin to the pope (through his mother, who was a Martinez) said that he feels the connection to the pope too, even though he’s a Baptist.

Working in ministry at a church in Texas since Hurricane Katrina, and with several other relatives who have taken similar paths across Christian denominations, he called ministry “a family business.”

“I am proud of him,” Polk said of Pope Leo. “The family pride is overflowing, and if there was anything I would like to say to him, it’s just congratulations and that God has put you in a powerful position, use it for good.”

Honora, the genealogist, called the revelation of the pope’s Black ancestry “important to the world,” adding that he hopes it will make Catholicism feel more inclusive for Black followers.

“Our pope is a brother,” Honora said during his conversation with Alverez, “and he’s got kinfolk right here that look like you and me.”