Report copyright Vatican Media

‘Finding Your Roots’ Team Reveals Pope Leo XIV Is Related to Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton & More

Originally posted on TV Insider | Last updated Jul 10, 2025 1:52 PM ET

Pope Leo XIV got a special visit from Finding Your Roots writer, host and executive producer Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., to learn about his ancestry. Two months after Leo XIV was elected pope, the findings of his genealogical research were published in the New York Times and revealed some of his famous distant cousins.

Gates presented his findings to the pope during a private meeting at the Vatican. Dr. Gates and his group were one of the first audiences to meet with the pope following his Conclave.

Following the meeting, Dr. Gates presented some of his takeaways. Most notably, Pope Leo is ninth cousins, various times removed, with famous figures. They are related through a distant maternal ancestor who was born in the 1590s.

The stars connected to the pope via this maternal ancestor are: Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie, Justin Bieber, Jack Kerouac, and Madonna.

Report copyright Vatican Media.

Additionally, Gates found that the American pope’s lineage is “surprisingly international,” and that many of the pope’s American-born ancestors were Black. A dozen of his ancestors were slaveholders, including several who were Black. The pope’s family tree also includes two freedom fighters.

The New York Times story notes that the pope’s Black ancestry is a “reflection of the complexities of the conquest and settling of the New York, the vast extent of voluntary European immigration and the involuntary, forced migration and enslavement of people of African descent who were ought to the Americas.”

It’s also noted that the pope’s family tree is “strikingly ‘ecumenical'” and an “expression of the endlessly fascinating, multifarious geographical and ethnic threads that make up our grand American story, threads that combined to help shape the truly cosmopolitan worldview of the man we might think of as the first pan-American pope.”

This article first appeared on TV Insider and was syndicated with permission.

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