A Divine Discovery
Imagine that you discovered, all in one day, that you are Pope and that you are Black. Does God have a sense of humor, or what?! I think that’s what happened to Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV. His grandparents were Black New Orleaneans until they moved to Chicago around 1910 and became white.
Split by the Lie of Race
Two parts of the family were ripped apart by the pernicious, ridiculous concept of race and all the political, social, and cultural assumptions that came with it in the early 1900s. That ridiculousness and many of those assumptions are still with us. Now, more than a century later, this family is reuniting, curious about each other, and celebrating their common ancestry.
Reconciliation as Divine Purpose
So yes, God has a sense of humor as a way of getting our attention. But the purpose of the lesson is reconciliation.
A Cousin in New Orleans East
Ellen Dionne Alvarez, 77, a lifelong Black New Orleanean, discovered lately through family records that she is Pope Leo’s second cousin once removed. “What does the Pope think about us being related? That is my question,” she said. “What does he think of us because we’re Afro-American?” In true New Orleans style she plans to write him a letter inviting him to come visit her home in New Orleans East.
White by Law, Black by Blood
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Malcolm Moore, 70, grew up just a few miles away from Alvarez in Broadmoor. He always considered himself white. He is also the Pope’s second cousin once removed. And he now lives in Destrehan. Alvarez and Moore both said they had happily devout Catholic childhoods surrounded by loving family and friends. They have both moved to other denominations now.
Parallel Lives in the Crescent City
Alvarez grew up in the St. Bernard Housing Project. Moore grew up in Broadmoor playing with the Landrieu kids.
Related: New Orleans Feels A Special Connection to the New Pope
A Hidden Truth Comes to Light
In the 1960s, Moore’s brother proposed marriage to a Jewish neighbor. He was shocked to find that his birth certificate said he was Black—making this marriage in Louisiana illegal. The couple eloped to a state where interracial marriage was legal. This family story was completely hushed up. When Moore checked his own birth certificate after taking DNA tests in 2019, he saw that his race had been blotted out and was no longer legible. “We’re interested in meeting the branch (of the family) that we didn’t even know (existed),” he said.
God’s Irony on a Global Stage
So God has a sense of humor and also a sense of irony. How clever of Him to put it out there on the world stage—the ridiculousness, the speciousness, the made-up-ness of the concept of race. Yes, our imagined racial identities have shaped all of our self-concepts, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
Can We Erase Race for Good?
How long will it take to blot out the concept of race once and for all—not just on our birth certificates, but from our collective social psyche?