Henry Louis Gates Jr. visited the Vatican to meet with Pope Leo XIV to deliver his genealogical findings on his family tree.
Gates confirmed that the first American pope is related to Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Justin Bieber, Pierre and Justin Trudeau, Hilary Clinton and Jack Kerouac, as reported by The New York Times.
Pope Leo, 69 is ninth-cousin several times removed to the celebrity group, and they are connected through a maternal ancestor who was born in the 1590s, according to Gates’ research.
Gates was able to trace Pope Leo’s ancestry back 15 generations and confirmed that several of his ancestors were enslaved people, while others in his lineage were slaveholders. He also has mixed Black and European ancestry.
Pope Leo, born Robert Prevost, was born and raised in Chicago, and always felt a calling to the role.