Born in the United States, with much of his formation and ministry in Peru in an international order, and most recently a cardinal in Rome, Pope Leo testifies to the international character of the Catholic world. His ancestry includes slaves, slaveholders, Spanish hidalgos, French Canadian settlers and Sicilian immigrants — and it seems that Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Jack Kerouac, Madonna and Justin Bieber are distant cousins.
Elise Ann Allen’s new biography, Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the 21st Century, is not the first biography of the pontiff (Matthew Bunson achieved that just 13 days after his election), but it is the first based on lengthy interviews with the Pope himself.
