Are you Catholic? Who's your Mama? And can you make a Roux?
This well-known humorous interrogation is a nod to the three questions New Orleanians would ask when they meet each other. The answers would let people know everything they needed to know about that person. It is now clear, Pope Leo XIV's answers are almost certainly in the affirmative—all the way to be chosen to lead of the Roman Catholic Church.
Excitement surrounded the election of the first American Pope, but even more so in New Orleans where the new Chicagoan Cardinal Robert Prevost's Catholic story began with his Creole grandparents.
Jari Honora of the Historic New Orleans Collection told WGNO he recognized Prevost as a prevalent name in Louisiana and began a "deep dive to see if there was some distant connection." In less than an hour into the organization's records, he learned there was in fact a connection to the city, with surprising results.
Pope Leo's grandmother, Louise Baquié, was born in New Orleans. She married the Pope's grandfather Joseph Martinez, believed to be a Haitian immigrant, in 1887 at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart on North Claiborne Avenue and Annette Street—since destroyed in the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915. They lived at 1933 North Prieur St. and started a family—a home since destroyed when creating the Claiborne overpass in the late 1950s.
Sweet Home Chicago
They moved to Chicago with their sons and daughters in 1911. Their daughter Mildrid—Prevost's mother—was born there shortly after.
"Up in Chicago, there were a lot of priests in and out of his [the future Pope Leo XIV] house because they liked his mom's cooking," Honora told WGNO. "Once I discovered she had this strong New Orleans tie, I said, well, no wonder they liked her cooking!"
Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
"We now know Pope Leo's great grandmother was baptized in this very church in 1870," said Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond at mass at New Orleans' iconic Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis, King of France on the Sunday after Pope Leo's XIV's election. The head of the archdiocese of New Oreleans went on to say, "We knew of a connection to New Orleans, but now we have two."
in September, 1987, Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis Cathedral. With the possibility that Leo XIV may come to commune with his spiritual maternal roots in the Crescent City during his papacy, the parish is excited at the prospect of another Papal visit to the historic church by the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.
It's never been much of a mystery on why the basis of all Louisiana cooking starts with onions, bell peppers, and celery—otherwise commonly known as "The Holy Trinity"—but now the term may have a deeper meaning.
