An inside look at how PBS host Henry Louis Gates Jr. met Pope Leo

Fans of PBS’ “Finding Your Roots” will recognize the setup: a massive family tree spread out on a table, with Henry Louis Gates Jr. ready to explore the branches of someone’s lineage they never knew they had.

But this was a holy different experience. This was the pope.

Gates met with Pope Leo XIV in July at the Vatican after the Harvard professor and PBS host published insights into his ancestry in The New York Times Magazine.

The family tree for the man born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago in 1955 reveals Latin American freedom fighters, Canadian nobility, enslaved ancestors and slave-holding ancestors and ties to two major pop stars, among other notable celebrities.

“I have done a lot of family trees in my time,” Gates told PBS News. “There are very few people who have a more diverse family tree or a family tree as extensive [as Leo], going back to a 12th great-grandfather and 12th great-grandmother.”

How Gates came to document Pope Leo’s heritage

Less than two hours after the new pope stepped out on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square to cheering crowds back in May, Gates said Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, reached out to him with some interesting information.

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“The pope is Black, Skip,” Gates said Walker told him, using his nickname. Walker explained that Dean Baquet, the former executive editor of The New York Times, knew his family, and Walker urged Gates to trace his family tree.

The New York Times reported that Leo has Creole ancestry, based on information from New Orleans genealogist Jari Honora. Gates said that, because of the number of genealogists interested in this topic, he knew he and the team would have to work quickly.

Gates enlisted the help of American Ancestors – the group that vets the research that the full-time genealogists do for “Finding Your Roots” – as well as the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami to build the pope’s family tree from scratch. Gates’ wife, historian Marial Iglesias Utset, also assisted with the research.

“I gave them five days to do the family tree,” Gates said. “Five days later, they had done a family tree going back to the pope’s 12th great-grandparents, to Juan Fernández de Arana, born about 1510, and Catalina González, also likely born in Spain.”

Gates noted that, coincidentally, the pope during that time was also Leo – Pope Leo X, who led the Catholic Church from 1513-1521 and is known for excommunicating theologian Martin Luther from the church for his part in starting the Protestant Reformation.

What they discovered about Pope Leo’s ancestry

Most of Pope Leo XIV’s ancestors listed on his family tree came from France, while 24 were from Italy, 21 from the United States, 21 from Spain, 10 from Cuba, six from Canada, one from Haiti and one from Guadeloupe.

Gates said genealogists identified 17 Black ancestors, who were identified by a variety of nomenclatures in the records – “mulatto,” “mulattress,” “free person of color” and “quadroon” among them.

Click on the image below to examine Pope Leo XIV’s family tree.

Chart prepared by Henry Louis Gates Jr., American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami and designed by Nick Sheedy

“It doesn’t matter if you were a Creole, [or] if you were a quadroon or an octoroon, you were legally Black in the United States,” Gates said. “Those were just euphemisms for different shades of Blackness, as it were.”

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The pope had slave-holding ancestors in his family tree, as well. What was surprising, Gates said, was the presence of eight Black slave-holding ancestors.

In one case, the pope’s fourth great-grandmother, Marie Jeanne, owned at least 20 slaves.

Marie Jeanne was enslaved by François Lemelle of New Orleans, according to the tree published by The New York Times Magazine. They had at least six children together. Lemelle later released Marie Jeanne and two of their daughters, Jacqueline and Julie, from slavery.

When Lemelle died, “he left her with one-fifth of his estate that included 15 enslaved people. Eventually, by 1817, her holdings had grown to 1,040 acres, including five slaves,” Gates said. “So over the course of her life as a free person, she owned 20 other enslaved people.”

The pope’s family also included freedom fighters, such as Charles Louis Boucher de Grandpre, who helped to capture British posts in the South during the American Revolution, and Antonio José de Sucre, who led a pivotal battle in Peru to help free Latin American countries from Spanish colonialism. Gates also said the pope’s family owned the property that became the Plaza de la Revolución, the square in Havana, Cuba, where Fidel Castro would deliver hours-long speeches during political rallies.

Pope Leo’s distant cousins from the Canadian end of his family tree include some prominent names: former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Canadian Prime Ministers Pierre and Justin Trudeau, author Jack Kerouac, actors Angelina Jolie and Chris Pratt, and musical performers Justin Bieber and Madonna.

“He’s the perfect pope for this moment in our world of so much cultural diversity because his genome is truly cosmopolitan,” Gates said. “I use the word ‘ecumenical’ in the Greek sense – embracive of the world. He has ancestors from everywhere, including Black ancestors, mixed-race ancestors, slave owners, enslaved, the whole thing.”

Gates visits the Vatican

Gates and Iglesias Utset were invited to present the pope with his family tree in early July, during a previously planned vacation in Rome. But the once-in-a-lifetime experience almost didn’t happen.

Two of Gates’ attempts to seek an audience with the pope were unsuccessful, so he tried another avenue: Wilton Gregory, the retired archbishop of Washington, D.C., and the first African American cardinal in the Catholic Church’s history.

“He said, well, this is a long shot, but let’s give it a whirl,” Gates said.

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It worked. Gates said he received an emailed invitation that seemed too good to be true.

“I thought it was AI,” he said. “I thought it was one of my friends playing a trick on me. But it was official, beautiful, with the crest of the Vatican.”

When Gates and Iglesias Utset walked into the pope’s office, the 4-foot by 5-foot printed family tree that they brought from Boston had been spread out on the desk. In their 30 minutes together, they walked Pope Leo through the summary of his tree and where his family roots came from, regaling him with stories about his ancestors.

Iglesias Utset and the pope “spoke in Spanish half the time, with her telling him great stories about his Spanish ancestors. And he was very impressed,” Gates said.

Pope Leo was most curious about his Haitian ancestry, the presence of slaveholders within his family tree and, given his time as a missionary and bishop in Peru, the freedom fighters.

“At the end, I said, ‘Your Holiness, I brought a copy of The New York Times Magazine.’ He said, ‘Well, I’d like you to autograph it,’” Gates said. “I said, ‘To whom do I make it out?’ And he goes, ‘To Pope Leo XIV.’ And we both busted out laughing.”

“I really like this guy,” Gates said. “I’m a huge fan, and it’s one of the greatest honors of my life to have spent that much quality time with him.”

Will their meeting be part of the new season of ‘Finding Your Roots’?

Unfortunately for Viewers Like You, Gates says the answer is no. Season 12 of PBS’ genealogy show, airing in January 2026, will feature Spike Lee, Kristin Chenoweth, Brittney Griner, Hasan Minhaj and Lizzo, among many others. At least one upcoming celebrity guest has not been named.

“When I film a guest for ‘Finding Your Roots,’ it’s five hours” of taping, Gates said. “So what was I going to do? Say, ‘Hey, Holy Father, you got five hours where I could sit down and analyze your tree, and tell you stories about it? Would you mind spitting in the test tube?’ That wasn’t going to happen.”