Back in 1989, Pope John Paul II condemned Madonna and urged Catholics to boycott her over her use of “blasphemous” imagery in her video for “Like a Prayer. ” In 1990, he denounced her Blond Ambition tour as “demonic” and urged Italian Catholics not to attend. But 35 years later, 20 years after his death, Madonna’s cousin was elected pope.
That’s according to The New York Times, which has exhaustively traced the family tree of Robert Prevost — now known as Pope Leo XIV — back to the early 1500s. Among the paper’s findings: Some of the pope’s eighth great-grandparents were born in France, but relocated to Quebec in the mid- to late 1650s.
Through one of those Canadian ancestors — a man named Louis Boucher de Grandpre, who was born in Quebec — the pope is a ninth cousin various times removed to multiple famous people, including Madonna. His other cousins include Justin Bieber, Angelina Jolie and Hillary Clinton, as well as former Canadian prime ministers Pierre and Justin Trudeau.
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