For Black Catholics in Milwaukee and beyond, Pope Leo brings hope of social justice, belonging – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Black Catholics have long struggled to find their place within the Catholic Church.
The church’s own past transgressions with racism — excluding Blacks from leadership roles, establishing segregated parishes and its participation in the Transatlantic African Slave Trade among them — have lingering effects that create a sense of invisibility among Black Catholics.
As Pope Leo XIV settles into his papacy, the three million U.S. Black Catholics contemplate its deeper meaning, as questions linger about his ethnic heritage.
Soon after smoke rose from the chimney high above the Sistine Chapel on May 8, announcing Robert Francis Prevost as the new pontiff, a New Orleans genealogist began digging into the pope’s background — a curiosity piqued by his last name.
What Jari C. Honora of the Historic New Orleans Collection found stirred hope and excitement among Black Catholics in the U.S. Combing through census records, Honora discovered the pontiff’s maternal grandparents hailed from New Orleans’ 7th Ward, an enclave for Creoles of color, before they moved to Chicago, where they lived as white people.
Not only is Prevost the first American pope in the Catholic Church’s history, but he may also be the first Black pope in modern times. Popes of African ancestry helmed the Catholic Church during the Roman Empire in the 2nd century.
And while Pope Leo XIV hasn’t acknowledged his Black familial roots, Milwaukee Black Catholics see optimism in his papacy on two fronts.
They hope he’ll continue the social activism of his predecessor, Pope Francis, who died at age 88 a day after Easter Sunday. They also hope the curiosity around the new pope’s heritage affirms that Black Catholics have been part of Catholicism for centuries.
“I can only be excited,” said Reine Assana, a member of Blessed Savior Parish on Milwaukee’s north side and a Senegalese native who’s lived in Milwaukee more than 30 years.
“Everybody is excited that we may have a pope who may have some roots in the Black community.”
Vevette Hill-Nwagbaraocha attends All Saints Catholic Church, also on the north side. She, too, is hopeful and excited about Pope Leo, regardless of how he identifies. But his lineage, she said, signals that Black Catholics are present in the church.
“This is almost proof, physical proof, to the world that we are seen,” said Hill-Nwagbaraocha, who’s also a member of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s Black Catholic Ministry Commission.
“We are included. America is included.”
Assana noted the irony of Pope Leo being ordained a priest in the Augustinian order, whose patron, St. Augustine, was a mixed-race Black man from North Africa.
“This church has roots deep in Africa,” she said.
Even during the selection process, there was talk that the next pope should hail from Africa, where Catholicism is growing the fastest.
“Just as the world was not ready for a Black president, I don’t think the world is ready for a Black pope, but they should,” Assana said.
A lot of people, she said, tend to look at the Catholic Church as Eurocentric and fail to realize its connections to North Africa. People of color, especially Black people, are very spiritual, which influences their faith, she said.
“We contribute a lot to this faith,” Assana said. “We want to be part of this faith.”
Assana hopes Pope Leo’s complex racial history makes him more empathetic to the plight of Black Americans. His missionary work in Peru seems to support that — working with the poor, the marginalized and the voiceless.
“Who are those people? Mostly, it is us,” Assana said of Africans and African Americans whose struggles are often overlooked by the church. “He will embrace it because it is part of his ministry. Just give him a little time.”
Hill-Nwagbaraocha, too, likes what she’s heard about the new pope, including his stance on immigration. But she hopes the pope coming from Chicago and his heritages give him a deeper understanding of the plight of people of color in the U.S.
“The circumstances here in America are so deep-seated and so institutionalized that many of us don’t understand sometimes what we are looking at,” Hill-Nwagbaraocha said. “And what’s happening in the political realm makes things more difficult. Hopefully, he has somewhat of an understanding of that.”
Some of those issues arise from the fact the Catholic Church owned slaves and profited from slavery. Black Catholics say there’s still a need for reconciliation around that issue.
While progress has been made, Hill-Nwagbaraocha said, racism still exists in the Catholic Church. And there’s still deep hurt over it. For Catholics, the Eucharist is the most sacred sacrament and many Black Catholics won’t even come to the church to take that sacrament.
“If hurt and harm keeps people from coming to the church, we have to do something about that,” she said. “That becomes a barrier to lots of people. Hopefully, he understands that.”
Honora’s discovery put a spotlight on Black Catholics, said Father Stephen Thorne, a consultant with the National Black Catholic Congress. It also ushered in a sense of kinship among Black Americans who often feel like stepchildren to the church and have similarly complex ancestry, he said.
He noted that Black Catholics are often viewed as an anomaly among Whites and Blacks. White people, he said, think Blacks can’t be Catholic while non-Catholic Blacks think “being Black and Catholic is some kind of dysfunction.” He’s even met folks who never met a Black Catholic or don’t believe Black nuns or priests exist.
“It really felt that we were affirmed,” said Thorne, a professor at Trinity University in Washington, D.C. “Sometimes, Black Catholics feel like we are not as cared for as much, not supported as much by the church.”
Much of that stems from the church’s history with slavery and its lack of action to fully address issues like racism. The church, he said, has been silent at times on speaking up for racial equality or against oppression.
Thorne cautioned the rush to claim Pope Leo as the first Black pope, though. There were others before him, including saints of African or mixed heritage, like St. Martin de Porres, who was Peruvian, and St. Benedict, who was born to slaves.
“The church is big and the church is old,” he said. “He would not be the first to have to have African or Black blood in him.”
Pope Victor I led the church from 189 to 199 AD, Pope Miltiades from 311 to 314 AD, and Pope Gelasius from 492 to 496 AD — all of whose roots trace to North Africa, a bastion of early Christianity.
“We have not always told the fullness of that story,” Thorne said.
The future direction of the church and the state of Black Catholics is Thorne’s main concern, not so much the pope’s past. Black Americans, statistically, have been at the bottom rung of every socioeconomic metric. And as preachers of the gospel, the church needs to be in the forefront of those issues, he said.
“We have a responsibility to speak,” he said. “Where do you stand on morality? Where do you stand on issues of justice? There is no middle ground here. Either you are speaking the gospel of Jesus Christ or you’re not.”
Thorne hopes the pope lives up to words he spoke during his first address, when he talked about moving forward and about God’s unconditional love for everyone. People, he said, have left the church because it has no relevancy to their lives.
“If we are going to be a missionary church as he talks about — a living church that loves people, that journeys together … we have to be honest about the sins and the injustices of the past,” he said. “I do think, for Black Catholics, the reality of racism has wounded the church.”