When Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié and their two young daughters lived at 1933 N. Prieur St. in 1900, New Orleans was the queen city of the South, with new electric streetcars and state-of-the-art infrastructure.

The streets of their 7th Ward neighborhood just downriver of the French Quarter were lined with shotgun doubles occupied by working- and middle-class families who were, predominantly, Creoles of color — longtime locals of mixed French, African and Caribbean ancestry with deep ties to the Roman Catholic Church.

The world was on the cusp of a new era, reshaping society, religion and global alliances. And the leader of that church was a pope named Leo XIII, who is remembered today for gracefully ushering Catholics into the modern age.

Now, 125 years later, the Martinezes' grandson, Robert Francis Prevost, has become Pope Leo XIV — the first American Pope and the first with Creole ancestry.

Little is known about what Joseph Martinez, a cigar maker born in Haiti, and his wife Louise, a homemaker and lifelong New Orleanian whose mother was baptized in St. Louis Cathedral, thought about their church or faith. But surely, they would never have imagined that their grandson would one day become the leader of the world’s oldest Christian church and second-largest religion, with 1.4 billion members.

Few others in New Orleans could have imagined it either.

"This latest news is very gratifying, stunning, to say the least," said 7th ward historian Raynard Sanders.

For local Catholics, whose church has been challenged by scandal and bankruptcy, the unprecedented selection of an American pope is cause for celebration. And for Black Catholics, who often have felt overlooked, the revelation that Pope Leo hails not only from America but from 7th Ward stock is especially meaningful, a moment of new possibility.

Our Lady of Gudalupe Church on N. Rampart Street on Friday, May 9, 2025.

“Now we have something else to celebrate besides festivals,” said Dimitria Boykins, a longtime local Catholic and member of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish on North Rampart Street. “In New Orleans, everyone treats visitors as family. We have family now that really is representing us.”

Deep roots

In the immediate aftermath of the dramatic announcement that the conclave of cardinals gathered at the Vatican had elected Prevost, a Chicago native, to be the church’s next leader, communities wasted no time claiming Leo XIV as their own. Among those touting their connection to the new pontiff were the governor of Illinois, Leo's home state; the president of Villanova University, his alma mater; and members of his congregation in Peru, where Leo served first as a missionary and then as bishop.

Within two hours of the announcement, a genealogist at the Historic New Orleans Collection, Jari Honora, changed the narrative, at least in south Louisiana, with his revelation that a quick search of ancestral records turned up Pope Leo’s deep local roots.

“Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, has Creole of color roots from New Orleans on his mother's side,” wrote Honora, a Black, Catholic New Orleanian.

Honora’s review of census and marriage records showed that the new pope’s grandparents — Joseph and Louise Martinez — were married in 1887 on Annette Street in the 7th Ward. In 1900, they owned and lived in the home on North Prieur, a few blocks away.

And, sometime between 1910 and 1912, they moved to Chicago, where Leo’s mother, Mildred, was born. Generations of the family remain there to this day.

After seeing the post, the Archdiocese of New Orleans began combing through the records at its Uptown headquarters. By Friday morning, Katie Beeman, archdiocese archivist, had uncovered original documents showing the pope’s great-grandmother, Eugenie Grambois, Louise's mother, was baptized in 1840 at the St. Louis Cathedral.

Another document shows Grambois married Ferdinand D. Baquié, the pope’s great-grandfather, in 1864 at St. Mary’s Church in the French Quarter. The old church building, on the grounds of the Ursulines Convent, is still used for weddings today.

“This shows how deep the pope’s genealogy goes here,” Beeman said.

Less is known about the pope's maternal grandfather, Joseph Norval Martinez. Census records from his youth indicate he was born in Louisiana. Later ones list his birthplace as Haiti and his occupation as a cigar maker, but Honora suspects Martinez could have deeper roots in New Orleans. And he almost certainly has cousins still living in the city. Honora's research shows the pope’s grandparents each had siblings, who had children and grandchildren of their own.

“I think people of faith feel a close connection with the Holy Father and they have a really close connection to him now they know he is, in part, a New Orleanian,” he said.

‘Got to come home’

News of the pope’s local connection sparked a frenzy on social media and a wave of news releases from elected officials.

Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now head of the National Urban League, happened to be back home for a gala for Xavier University and joined in the celebratory remarks.

“First, we find out he’s an American and from Chicago. Then we find out his family is from here, and from the 1900 block of Prieur Street in the 7th Ward,” Morial said. “That’s Black New Orleans.”

For Kenitha Grooms-Williams, executive director of Lantern Light Ministries, a nonprofit that serves the homeless and poor on the edge of downtown, the revelation was a source of pride and cause for reflection and gratitude.

“We certainly never thought we would have a pope with roots in our community,” said Grooms-Williams, a parishioner at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in Treme. “To think his grandparents lived just blocks from here makes me very, very proud.”

Givonna Joseph, a seventh-generation New Orleanian and director of the OperaCréole arts nonprofit, said her phone "has been blowing up” with texts and calls since the news broke.

Outside Our Lady of Guadalupe, on the day after the announcement, parishioner Helen Madison said she feels a special connection to the new pontiff by virtue of his local ties.

“When I heard the pope’s family was from New Orleans, the first thing that came to mind is he’s got to come here,” Madison said. “He’s got to come home.”

Joseph Martinez and Louise BaquiŽ married at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans, a 1908 map showing the church on the corner of Annette St. and Claiborne Ave. Until it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1915, the church building was on Annette Street in the cityÕs Seventh Ward, a historic center of Afro-Creole culture.

More to discover

While the news of Pope Leo’s local ancestry has been a source of joy for Black Catholics, it also raises painful questions about the history of race and segregation.

Why, for instance, did the Martinez family move to Chicago when they did?

The turn of the last century was “near the nadir of post-bellum American race relations,” according to Rich Campanella, a geographer with the Tulane University School of Architecture and Built Environment. The period brought with it codified racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, and a hard distinction made between Black and White people.

These conditions could explain the family’s decision to move north, which was not uncommon at the time. The advent of extensive passenger railroad service made the task easier.

“There were many others who made that move,” Campanella said. “Many jazz musicians found not only less overt discrimination in Chicago, New York and Paris, but also a more appreciative audience.”

Honora said the pope’s connection to New Orleans was hard to discover, because the Martinez family migrated at a time when many Black New Orleanians shed their identity and started new lives elsewhere.

In an interview Thursday with The New York Times , Pope Leo’s older brother, John Prevost, confirmed his family’s ancestry and said he and his brothers never discussed their Creole roots or considered it an issue.

Honora said he doesn't judge people's choices to seek better lives, but for him, as a genealogist, it’s a painful chapter of too many American stories.

“You just think of the familial ties that were broken,” he said. “The archival material that may have been in possession in branches of families that migrated. Over time, as sentimental connections were lost, these documents were tossed into trash heaps.”

7th Ward in the spotlight

Sanders, the historian and a friend of Honora's, said the pope's ascension elevates a New Orleans neighborhood that has contributed much to the world.

“After years of studying this community, nothing surprises me about the 7th Ward and Treme,” said Sanders, co-founder of the Claiborne Avenue History Project, a nonprofit that studies the cultural and economic heyday of one of New Orleans’ historically Black neighborhoods. “Many people from there made contributions in arts, literature and, quite naturally, music.”

Sanders points out the news about the pope’s New Orleans roots comes a few months after the celebration of Edmund Dédé, the Black American composer who grew up in New Orleans in the first half of the 19th century before moving to France, where he had a successful music career. A lost opera of his was performed in New Orleans and New York earlier this year.

“Gems come out of the history of these individuals that we know little or nothing about,” Sanders said.

But the news is also a reminder of how much was lost in the Martinezes’ 7th Ward neighborhood over the years. After the family moved to Chicago, the church where Joseph and Louise were married was destroyed by the hurricane of 1915.

In the 1960s, their home was among the hundreds that were razed to make way for construction of the Claiborne Avenue Overpass and Interstate 10.

The now controversial highway project cut a diagonal scar through the heart of one of the city's predominantly Black neighborhoods, leaving economic destruction in its wake.

“This discovery helps to tell the story of how unjust the Claiborne overpass was,” Morial said. “The decision to knock all those houses down was made before the Voting Rights Act, and when the Black community had no power.”

Morial said there were other, better options on the table, “but they picked the heart and soul of the New Orleans Black community in those days.”

Today, the monstrous elevated interstate casts a shadow over the exact location of the Martinez family’s former home. On Friday, as trucks and cars raced by overhead in a heavy downpour, rainwater gushed down concrete columns tagged with graffiti.

The grass below needed mowing. But the scene wasn't entirely gloomy.

Standing in the doorway of a small brick apartment building a few doors down from 1933 N. Prieur St., tenant Jerreo Ridgley, 40, said he had been surprised to hear on the TV news the night before that the pope’s family had lived in his neighborhood.

“I never knew there had been a house there,” Ridgley said with a smile. "It’s wonderful to know that."