For the public, Pope Leo XIV is the first American pope in history. Researchers and genealogists had a slightly more complicated answer - his roots are a mix of Spanish hidalgos, Mississippi creoles, a Peruvian mission, and the Chicago working class. A biography that doesn't look like a standard Vatican CV.

Born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago in 1955, the new pope comes from a family with deep roots in Spanish Cantabria. According to genealogical records, his Spanish ancestors were „hidalgos" - members of the lower nobility - with farming estates recorded on the Isla island as far back as 1573. Those hidalgos left Spain for the United States in the early 18th century.

On his mother's side, the story is different. His grandparents lived in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans at the end of the 19th century, in a time when that part of the city was a stronghold of the creole community. French, Spanish, indigenous Louisianians and free Black people mixed in those streets, and from that mix came the family of the future pope. A Cantabrian noble and a New Orleans creole in the same line - a first in Vatican history.

Prevost spent forty years as a missionary in Peru. He taught in the city of Chiclayo, then became the bishop there. He received Peruvian citizenship in 2015 - meaning he holds three: American, Peruvian, and now Vatican. He speaks seven languages fluently, including Quechua - the language of the indigenous peoples of the Andes. Very few popes in history could say the same.

Out of all these pieces, one thing is clear - Leo XIV isn't an „American" pope in any national sense. He's the product of four continents and several centuries of migration. Northern Italy spent centuries trying to keep the papacy as its own. Now, for the first time, the popes come from distant parts of the world, carry more than one biography, and because of that, other religions won't be able to label the Vatican as a European institution as easily. Long processes sometimes have long consequences.