Thanks to researchers at American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, Pope Leo XIV’s ancestry can be traced as far back as the early 1500s to Louis Boucher de Grandpré, who was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
Louis was the grandson of Pierre Boucher de Boucherville.
The common ancestors amongst these famous people are Pierre’s parents Gaspard Boucher and Nicole Lemaire, who settled in New France in 1634 with their son Pierre and four other children.
Through this line, the Pope is distant cousins with Justin Bieber, Madonna, Pierre and Justin Trudeau, Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, and Jack Kerouac.
You can read a bit more about this discovery in The New York Times Magazine article, written by Henry Louis Gates Jr. American Ancestors unlocked and posted this article on their website for anyone to view.
Details and a family tree
For those of us who prefer reading the details about the Pope and his distant cousins’ genealogy, American Ancestors’ blog post, The Pope’s French-Canadian Cousins, helps connect the dots. A family tree showing how he and his cousins are related can be found at the end of the article.
