NEW ORLEANS — When white smoke was seen coming from the Sistine Chapel back in May, it wasn’t long before the Archdiocese of New Orleans realized something special had happened.

“After the Pope was elected, within probably 24 hours, there was information about his connection to New Orleans,” said Research Archivist Sarah Waits.

Waits says that the connection to Pope Leo XIV turned into a deep dive through centuries of church records, uncovering generations of family ties in the Crescent City.

“I spent the next few weeks finding records within our sacramental records, so baptisms, marriages, and funerals,” said Waits. “[I] was really able to trace his ancestry through Louisiana back about 200 years to the early 1700s.”

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