its Norman origins and links with French
The information has not escaped the French. The new American pope Léon XIV, of his civil name Robert Francis Prevost, has a French surname and Norman origins. If his father, Louis Marius Prevost, was born in Chicago in 1920, his grandmother, Suzanne Louise Marie Fontaine, was born on February 2, 1894 in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) according to the genealogists.
This grandmother would come from a union between Ernest Auguste Fontaine and Jeanne Eugénie Prévost, a couple of pastry chefs, from Doudeville, located 70 km from Le Havre. In the heart of the Pays de Caux, known for its blue bloom blue fields. In 1878, the young Ernest Fontaine was 21 years old when he was mobilized in the 74th infantry regiment in 1878. He made four years of military service and then joined the reservists – he was then among the first promotions of the reserve, which appeared under the Third Republic after the Franco -German war in 1870. In October 1886, he married Jeanne Euénie Prévost. From their union are born four children: Adrienne Jeanne Armande (1887), André Louis Edouard (1888), Suzanne Louis Marie (1894) -Telle who became the grandmother of Léon XIV -and Henry Eugène (1898). Their older Adrienne died three days after his birth.
On November 1, 1903, Ernest Fontaine was definitively released from his military activities. His daughter Suzanne is already nine years old.
Did Jeanne Eugénie and Ernest choose to move to Le Havre to develop their business? The question remains unanswered.
Suzanne she left Le Havre on March 13, 1915 when the First World War raged. Transformed into a rear base to support the war effort, the port city is unrecognizable with these recurring air and maritime threats. The 21 -year -old woman embarks on board the Touraine, a liner from the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique which still ensures the journeys between Le Havre and New York despite the conflict. In the list of passengers is no trace of her mother. Suzanne would have traveled alone.
A week later, she arrived at the feet of the statue of freedom. The same year she will meet a certain John Prévost (who has the same family name as her mother-in-law without being connected) and will give birth to the father of Pope Leo XIV. It is here that the French memories of the 267th pope stop.
A surprise for the Le Havres
Almost 130 years later, Le Havre of the 21st century discovered the history of this family line. “You teach me!” », React to the other end of the line at the Havre tourist office. As for the city’s archives, we only have the birth certificate of Suzanne Fontaine and the death certificate of her father, Ernest Fountain the great-grandfather of the new Pope.
He died on February 19, 1919 at the Gustave Flaubert Hospital in Le Havre. But his burial is not listed in any cemetery of the town. The funeral concession may not have been resumed.
Cousin with French personalities
Some do not know it yet but they could discover being a very distant cousin with the new pope. Like former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, from Rouen.
“If we go back to the 17th century, they share the same ancestors!” », Unveils Gilles Quedeville, a genealogy enthusiast in Seine-Maritime, who traces the kinship ties of local personalities. There would also be actress Catherine Deneuve or the Camille Lecointre skipper, double bronze medalist at the Rio and Tokyo Olympic Games. The French roots of Pope Leo XIV have not yet said their last word.
