Since the election of Pope Leo XIV on Thursday May 8, 2025, French genealogists have been very busy researching his French ancestry. He was born Robert Francis Prevost. His paternal grandmother, Suzanne Louise Fontaine (1894-1979), was born in Le Havre, Normandie! His other French ancestry comes from his maternal great-great-great-grandparents.

Because genealogy is clearly and obviously not one person’s tree but rather the tree of Humanity where we are all cousins, Pope Leo XIV is linked to:

• Albert Camus (1913-1960), French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist
• Catherine Deneuve, French actress
• French Noble families from the Provence, Bourgogne, Savoie regions… such as:
  • de Pontevès
  • de Sabran
  • d’Agoult
  • de La Tour du Pin
  • de Faucigny
  • de Toulouse

You get it… If you’ve been researching your genealogy for long enough, you know full well by now that his lineage goes “up” very far in time and History and that at some point, sooner or later, also meets your own ancestors.

Just like so many, I simply had to start the genealogy of Pope Leo XIV. So here I am, embarked in yet another exciting adventure of discoveries, looking forward to finding out which one of my existing branches will first link me to Pope Leo XIV! (I included below the link to Pope Leo XIV on my Geneanet tree).

With roots from multiple countries and continents, speaking English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, reading German and Latin, I think you are a wonderful choice of Pope, Leo XIV, to reunite the hearts of our world made of individuals with multiple skin colors and social levels. May you contribute to bring peace on our planet who needs it so much…

Sources to prepare this post: Wikipedia, La revue française de Généalogie, France2, TF1 (interview of Christophe Becker, President of Geneanet, whom I had the pleasure to meet in person at RootsTech, 2 months ago), and many other articles online.

Genealogy

Here are the links to several pages on my Geneanet tree related to individuals or events mentioned in this post: (FYI: on Geneanet, the little “green circle” on an individual’s image indicates my direct lineage with the individuals).

Pope Leo XIV

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

A few families cited above: de Pontevès, de Sabran, d’Agoult, de La Tour du Pin, de Faucigny (I usually include for each family a section with the sources I used for my research).

Note: after clicking on a family’s page, you will see “Adoptive father” on the right, in the “Relationships” section. Click on the “Adoptive father” icon: it will show you where the family originated from, and also give you churches and castles of the same region of France.

You can find all regions of France either from the “Châteaux par régions” (Castles by region) page, or the “Églises par régions” (Churches by region) page.

Clicking on the images below will also take you to that specific page.