Pope Prevost has Sicilian origins, exactly from Milazzo. This is what the Discord Server Genealogy and the Center de Généalogie claim. The archivistic research reveal that the paternal grandfather was Sicilian. His name was Salvatore Giovanni Riggitano and was born in Milazzo on June 24, 1876 in the house in via Ottaviana; He was the son of Riggitano Saints (Usciere of the 50s) and of Alioto Maria, 42 years old, united in marriage in 1853. Pope Prevost’s grandfather, then, emigrated to America in 1904 where he reached Quincy, in the state of Illinois, his pink sister landed in New York in June 1903 with the Lombardy ship sailed from the port of Naples (as shown by the data of Ellis Island).
There he becomes John and also changes surname in Prevost (surname of his mother of his wife Suzanne) since a case had also arisen (he was already married). Meanwhile he had started teaching languages (including Italian). The key to this “yellow” is linked to his work: an advertising announcement of such a “Riggitano-Prevost” on the Chicago Tribune of 6 May 1934. In 1940, then, he himself declares, as requested by the authorities, not to be an American citizen, to be called John Riggitano Prevost but to have arrived in the USA with the name of Salvatore Giovanni Ringing Alioto (surname, the latter).
Even the Pope is then linked to the history of post-unitary southern emigrationthe one that brought the populations of the former kingdom of the two Sicilies to emigrate en masse (5 million only between 1870 and 1913) in a phenomenon never known first by the southern parts and which is not yet finished, in particular for our young people, as evidenced by the current statistics.
The words of the mayor Pippo Midili
“We immediately took action when we learned of the reconstruction of the International Association for Italian Genealogical Studies on the possibility of the Milanese origin of the ancestors of Pope Leo XIV, and we actually verified through the birth act and the marriage certificate produced by our demographic offices, confirmed that the grandfather of the pontiff was born in Milazzo”. To affirm it The mayor Pippo Midili who adds: “We will proceed to pardon these official acts by sending them with an official note to the Vatican, hoping that it can please Pope Leone, knowing about these Italian origins and in particular Sicilian and Milanese. And perhaps that he can also remember these passages of his family history. Then we will see in concert with the Holy See the other paths to be done as soon as the appointment of the Secretary of State of the Vatican will take place”.