The first American pope arrives in Paris on Friday for the start of a four-day trip to France that will feature popemobile parades, an open-air Mass on the Champs-Élysées and a visit to the Sanctuary of Lourdes. The trip – the first papal state visit since 2008 – is being labelled in France as a homecoming for the Chicago-born pontiff, more than a century after his grandmother left her native Normandy to build a life in the US – and eight decades after his father took part in the D-Day landings. It will include a visit to Metz in eastern Lorraine, the home region of a 17th-century monk Leo XIV has described as a spiritual mentor, where he will plead for peace in Europe and meet with other faith leaders.
Read morePope Leo to visit a secular France at odds with Catholic views on abortion, euthanasia “Leo – Robert Prevost before his election as pope – has French connections on both sides of his family tree,” says Christopher White, associate director at Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, and the author of “Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy”. A banner welcoming the pope in Lourdes, in southwest France. © Fred Scheiber, AP “His surname comes from his French great-grandmother on his father’s side, who was born in Normandy,” adds White. The birth certificate of Suzanne Fontaine, Pope Leo's French grandmother. © Archives départementales de Seine-Maritime Suzanne emigrated to the United States in 1915, during World War I, bound for New York.
Shortly after her arrival, she fell in love with a Sicilian man who was already married – he too had recently arrived in America – named Salvatore Riggitano. The couple had two sons, but they were unable to take their father’s surname owing to their illegitimate status. Instead, they were named after their maternal grandmother: Prevost.
One of the two boys, Louis Marius Prevost, born in 1920, was the father of the future pope. He served in the US Navy during World War II, returning to his ancestors’ Normandy coast during the D-Day landings in June 1944. He also took part in the Provence landings a few weeks later and had attained the rank of lieutenant by the end of the war.
A generation after Suzanne’s arrival in the US, French was still spoken within the family. The future pope’s uncle, Jean Prévost, taught the language and published a study on Dandyism in France between 1817 and 1839. However, this French culture was not passed on to the following generation.
White says Leo XIV has shown great interest in his family history since becoming pope. Despite this growing interest, the 71-year-old Pope has seldom visited his grandmother’s native country. Pope Leo, pictured here in 2019, spent more than two decades in Pero, where he served as bishop of the diocese of Chiclayo. © handout One of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes will host the pontiff on Saturday and Sunday.
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