According to a New York Times study, Pope Leon XIV has Cantabrian roots

According to a study by the New York Times, the four eleventh generation great-grandparents of Pope Leon XIV are in the town of Isla, Cantabria, in the municipality of Arnuero, where they were hidalgos.

This appears in a 1573 census of the Isle, according to this media. They have investigated the roots of the present pope and identified more than 80 of his ancestors, of whom 40 are from France, 24 from Italy, and 21 from Spain.

In the case of those of Spanish origin, what has been investigated at its roots has reached the sixteenth century Spain by the Pope's mother.

According to this study, one of his great-great-grandchildren was Diego de Arana Valladar, captain of the Navy and Earth, who had spent years fighting in America against the Dutch Corsarios who were trying to seize the colonial possessions of the Portuguese.

Moreover, according to the study, at least five generationsof the ancestors of the pope's father were born in Sicily, including the grandfather of Salvatore Giovanni Gaetano Riggitano Alito León XIV, in 1876.

Because, according to the study, he was about to become a priest, but he couldn't vote, preferred to marry, and even had a lover, Suzanne Louise Marie Fontaine, born in France and emigrated to the United States a decade later than Salvatore.

From this extra-marital relationship were born two sons: Jean, uncle of the Pope, and Louis, father of the Pope. They both received their grandmother's maiden name, Prévost.

That is why the pope has a French surname, though almost all the ancestors of his paternal grandfather are Italians.