Madonna and the new Pope are actually cousins. And “The Material Girl” isn’t the only celebrity who is related to Pope Leo XIV. According to professor and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., published in the New York Times, Madonna and Pope Leo are ninth cousins, various times removed.

But over his childhood home. Pope Leo XIV was born in Chicago in 1955 and grew up in a squat brick house just south of the city in the Village of Dolton, a town that boomed in the post-war era but has become blighted like many Rust Belt towns.