A Divine Bloodline? It Turns Out Madonna Is Related to The Pope

Santo cielo! The spiritual leader of the Catholic church and The Material Girl are apparently family.

In a twist that's sure to leave religious right-wingers clutching their prayer beads, it turns out that pop singer Madonna is a cousin to none other than Pope Leo XIV.

The Queen of Pop and the Pontiff "are 'ninth cousins, various times removed,' Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of the PBS show 'Finding Your Roots,' recently revealed in the New York Times," according to Entertainment Weekly.

The two share DNA "through a distant maternal relative born in the 1590s," the writeup detailed.

But that's not all; there's a whole constellation sprawled across the starry firmament that includes not just Madge and His Holiness, but a number of other notables, as well.

Explained Gates: "Through one Canadian ancestor, Louis Boucher de Grandpre, who was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, the pope is related to numerous Canadian-derived distant cousins, including Pierre and Justin Trudeau, Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Justin Bieber, Jack Kerouac, and Madonna."

While the religious right were hoping for a far more conservative pope, Leo XIV seems generally inclined towards the pastoral side of the faith, as was his immediate predecessor, Pope Francis. Fittingly, Gates' research shows that Leo is – genetically, at least – well suited to be the leader of a faith that regards itself as universal (from the Greek word katholikos).

"His diverse ancestry reflects the history of American immigration," Gates wrote in the New York Times article. "The forebears identified so far were born in France (40), Italy (24), Spain (21), the United States (22), Cuba (10), Canada (6), Haiti (1) and Guadeloupe (1)."

Moreover, "Seventeen of the pope's American ancestors were Black," Gates noted.

Leo – whose birth name is Robert Francis Prevost – is the first pope to hail from the United States, and his lineage includes at least one valorous fighter in the Revolutionary War: "The pope's maternal fourth-great-grandfather, Charles Louis Boucher de Grandpre, commanded the Louisiana militia at Pointe Coupée in 1777, capturing British posts at Thompson's Creek and the Amite River," Gates revealed.

Another ancestor was a freedom fighter elsewhere: Gates detailed that "Antonio José de Sucre, Pope Leo's fifth cousin five times removed, was a hero of the Battle of Ayacucho and played a crucial role in defeating Spanish colonialism throughout Latin America."

But back to that Madonna connection: Madge's "1989 video for the song 'Like a Prayer' was called 'a blasphemy and insult' to the Catholic church," EW recalled.