History Is Made: The New Pope Has Roux in His Gumbo! 

Something For Sunday

By Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

The Holy Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals has chosen the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost to become Pope Leo XIV. This marks a historic moment because the new Pope is an American.

For centuries, such a possibility has been considered taboo. And why? Most of the Catholic hierarchy has long believed that a Pope, seated in Rome but connected to the most powerful capitalist country in the world—the United States—would be untenable. Too much power. Too much influence. Until May 8, 2025.

The media has dissected his American citizenship and heritage ad nauseam. But what has not been widely discussed is Pope Leo’s Creole genealogy.

CNN reports: “The newly elected pontiff is not known to have publicly commented on his Creole ancestry. But the family did not identify as Black, his brother told The New York Times.”

Pope Leo may not identify as Black, but the moment the curtains opened and he walked out onto that balcony—visible to the world—I, alongside many others, thought: we’ve seen this kind of brother before!

CNN went on to report that the new Pope’s maternal grandparents lived in New Orleans before migrating to Chicago. In short: his people are from the “Dirty South!” Census records list his maternal grandparents as Black, and they came from Haiti (Hayti Haaytee).

This matters. The world needs to know that its new Pope has racial and social roots in the dispossessed and sociomarginalized. Like I said—History is made: the new Pope has roux in his gumbo!

However, there’s more to be concerned about.

Pope Leo, the world will need you to confront neoliberalism, neofascism, and authoritarianism. The growing paranoia among Europeans and white Americans has become a nihilistic (hopelessness, lovelessness) psychological epidemic.

Straightway, the most influential leader of organized religion must tell the world: we are close to losing our democracy—both at home and abroad. Many members of your own flock support this very epidemic.

As I wrote in “King warns the nation: white America, the political economy, the age of Obama”:

“Neofascism has emerged from the crisis of neoliberal capitalism. We begin by locating neofascism within the contemporary dynamics of capitalist crisis, including the legitimacy crisis of the capitalist state, the relationship between neofascist ideology and capitalist political coalitions, and the similarities and differences between neofascism and earlier varieties of fascism. 

“Toward that end, we analyze neofascism as having a much closer relationship to neoliberal ideology that is commonly understood, especially given the decades long theorizing by neoliberals about how to use the state to prevent democratic movements from interfering with capitalist accumulation and market imperatives.”

Pope Leo, the world will also need you to confront predatory capitalism—also known as racial and late capitalism. In short, this is called the political economy, because the American empire picks winners and losers not based on morality, but on the economic and political priorities of capitalist stakeholders.

This species of market economy has not only strangled Americans’ ability to earn a living wage—it has triggered a broader global crisis for the citizens of most nations.

As I also wrote in “King warns the nation: white America, the political economy, the age of Obama”:

“The political economy is controversial and difficult to confront and define in simple and straightway terms. It can be grasped, however, by highlighting the behavior of its two hybridized surrogates: neofascism and neoliberalism. Philosophically, neofascism and neoliberalism represent the Theo political right and the Theo political left. Their talons include racism, capitalism, identity politics, and gender manipulations and exploitations. 

“Both ideological worldviews are embedded in the fabric of white America’s sociopolitical and socioeconomic central nervous system. neofascism and neoliberalism have similar goals and objectives: to remain authoritarian(s) over sociopolitical and socioeconomic, domestic, and global affairs.”

This is heavy stuff—ain’t that the truth—but it’s necessary for readers to know what may be in the roux of the new Pope’s New Orleans gumbo.

I am praying for this brother in Christ. And I hope he will introduce the world to Howard Washington Thurman’s powerful book, Jesus and the Disinherited.