Abraham Lincoln, the Pope, and the Creoles

By David J. Kent

Washington, DC

Friday, May 9, 2025

All the world is agog this week as the papal conclave selected a new pope.

In a puff of white smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel in Rome, Cardinal Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV. We here in the United States were quick to take possession of him as the "first American pope," conveniently forgetting, as the rest of the Americas were quick to remind us, that "America" technically includes all of North and South America, which makes the recently deceased Pope Francis of Argentina the first. Be that as it may, the new Pope Leo has a more interesting, albeit indirect, connection to the U.S., and indeed, to Abraham Lincoln.

It seems the 69-year-oldPope Leo, who was born in Chicago but spent much of his career doing missionary work in Peru, also has Creole lineage. His maternal grandparents lived in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans in the early 1900s and were listed as black in the census records from 1900. His grandfather was listed in that census as a cigar maker born in "Hayti." The family notes that they were Creole, a mix of European and African descent. The grandparents moved to Chicago between 1901 and 1912, where the new pope's mother was born.

So, what does this have to do with Lincoln?

While Lincoln didn't have a lot of contact with the pope during the Civil War, he did appoint an emissary to communicate between the Union and the Vatican. Pius IX, the reigning pope at the time (and for 32 years around that time), had sent a letter to the Confederacy, primarily praying for both sides to find a path toward peace. The Confederacy used the letter for propaganda, but no actual diplomatic relations or recognitions were extended. Meanwhile, Lincoln went through a series of emissaries to the Vatican.

In September of 1862, Lincoln was visited by a group of religious men pleading for him to emancipate the enslaved people of the nation. Lincoln at this point already had the Emancipation Proclamation written but was waiting for a Union victory to issue it (he would do so about 10 days later), but made a reference to papal declarations in his response:

"What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do. ... I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the pope's bull against the comet! Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel states?"

The "pope's bull against the comet" refers to a myth that during his short papacy, Pope Callixtus III "excommunicated Halley's Comet" as an "instrument of the devil."

And then there are the Creoles. Lincoln was visited in the spring of 1864 by Jean Baptist Roudanez and E. Arnold Beronneau, two Creole leaders from New Orleans. Louisiana was in the midst of working toward reconstruction and one of the sticking points was whether black men would be allowed to vote. Creoles like Roudanez and Beronneau were generally more educated, owned land and businesses, were wealthier (and thus had the means to self-sufficiency), and were always loyal to the the Union. They presented a petition listing more than a thousand names, "all representing both real or personal property." They wanted political recognition and voting rights, even if the newly elected military governor Michael Hahn, did not. They pressed Lincoln to force the issue.

Lincoln wrote private letters to encourage voting rights for at least some black men, but the Louisiana government chose to omit that in the new reconstruction constitution.

On April 11, 1865, Lincoln gave his final public speech. In it he made his first public statements regarding black enfranchisement, noting that "I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers." He conceded, however, that like the Founding Fathers, getting Louisiana and other states into the Union under the national Constitution was the key, and once reestablished, other aspects could be attained within that framework.

Lincoln was often accused of moving too slowly, but, he argued, he never went backwards. The new Pope Leo XIV will no doubt take a while to set his papal sails into the stormy winds of the present. Perhaps ironically, Lincoln once cautioned that "the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present," adding that, "we must rise with the occasion."

[Pope Pius XIV courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Author Edgar Beltrán / The Pillar]