HIDDEN FIGURES: THE THREE BLACK POPES

SPECIAL REPORT: HIDDEN FIGURES – THE THREE BLACK POPES

This week, we interrupt our regular programming to bring you something different but deeply connected.

While we’ve been focusing on the present-day reality of Black women as the canaries in the workplace coal mine, sometimes the past reveals truths we desperately need in the now. During a recent talk about my book Qualified, someone in the audience posed a provocative question:

“How do we even know we’re the first? What if we’re not? What if history just made it seem like we are?”

That question hit me hard and made me reflect: our erasure is often mistaken for absence.

So today, let’s talk about hidden figures—not at NASA, but in the Vatican.

The Three Black Popes You've Likely Never Heard Of

Pope Victor I. Pope Miltiades. Pope Gelasius I.

Three African men. Three leaders of the Catholic Church in antiquity. Three popes whose legacies shaped Christianity itself, and yet, their Blackness remains largely hidden or disputed, even as the Catholic Church itself affirms their African origins.

• Pope Victor I (189–199 AD): The reason Easter is celebrated on a Sunday.

• Pope Miltiades (311–314 AD): Presided over the church during Constantine’s reign, a pivotal moment of power consolidation.

• Pope Gelasius I (492–496 AD): A theological giant who insisted on the supremacy of spiritual authority over secular kings.

These men were Black, African, and central figures in one of the most influential religious institutions in history.

So why don’t we know their names?

White Marble Lies: How Art Obscures Truth

To understand the erasure of the Black popes, we have to understand how antiquity itself has been whitewashed. Art historian Dr. Sarah Bond, featured in Artforum, wrote about how classical sculptures that were originally painted in vibrant hues of gold, red, brown, and black, but once discovered, were intentionally misrepresented as white marble.

For telling the truth, she received death threats.

Whiteness is a modern concept, invented only about 400 years ago in direct correlation with the transatlantic slave trade. The Greeks and Romans didn’t see the world through racial categories like we do now. You became Roman by culture and allegiance not skin color.

So those “pure white” statues? Not historically accurate. They were once colorful, textured, and representative of a multiracial empire. But the 18th-century scholar Johan Winckelmann projected his idealized version of whiteness onto antiquity, creating a Eurocentric fantasy that endures in museums to this day.

Even hair texture carved in stone—tight curls, broad noses—was misinterpreted or ignored. Without diverse voices in art history, the true multiculturalism of ancient societies remains obscured.

The Power of Being Hidden

As the BBC notes, the possibility of a Black pope today is seen as unprecedented. But that’s only because history has hidden the truth: we were there. We helped shape the liturgy, define church governance, and spread the word.

It’s not that we’re becoming part of the story; we’ve always been the story. The interruption of that truth is what is unnatural. The exclusion is the diversion.

We think we're first when in fact, we may be returning.

So What Happened?

How did we go from Black popes in Rome to being considered anomalies in leadership today?

The answer is colonialism. White supremacy. A systemic and intentional effort to rewrite history and sever the continuity of Black inclusion and authority. When people now say “let’s not talk about race,” they forget: race was invented to control power.

This isn’t about nostalgia or institutional loyalty. You don’t have to support the Catholic Church to understand its significance. This is about correcting the record and reclaiming our place in global history.

If a Black man becomes pope he won’t be the first. He will be part of a lineage interrupted by design and worthy of restoration.

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🔁 SHARE THIS: Let’s stop mistaking our erasure for absence. Our story didn’t begin with visibility, it started with presence. Hidden. Misrepresented. But never gone.

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