TONYA MOSLEY, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Today, a story about how American racism tore a family apart and how Pope Leo XIV was the catalyst for bringing them together. Last spring, when the news broke that the newly-elected pope had Creole roots in New Orleans and that his own grandparents had quietly become a white family in Chicago, journalist Susan Saulny recognized the story immediately. Her family had lived a version of it.