The sprawling country villa set in Italy's Asti wine region that was once home to the new Pope's father The 76-year-old's family hail from Portacomaro Stazione in northern Italy Village is in Italy's Asti wine region famous for sparkling Asti Spumante Tucked away among the vineyards in the gentle rolling hills of northern Italy is the former family of home of the new Pope's father. Francis I may have become the first Pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe for a 1,000 years, but, like the grave vines, he still has strong Italian roots. The 76-year-old's family hail from Portacomaro Stazione, in the wine producing region of Asti, famous for its sparking Asti Spumante, where his father Mario José was an Italian railway worker. The former home of the father of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Portacomaro Stazione, Asti The villa is tucked away among the vineyards in the gentle rolling hills of northern Italy The family then relocated - like thousands of other hundreds of thousands of Italian migrants - across the Atlantic to South America. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pontiff this week, was born and bred in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he has spent most of his life. In Italy, however, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires still has relatives, including Armando Bergoglio, a cousin of his father, in the village of Portacomaro Stazione. His family was just one of a great influx of migrants who flocked from Italy to Argentina in two great waves around the end of the 19th century and immediately after the World War II. Between 1857 and 1930 total immigration was over 6,000,000, almost all from Europe. About 55 per cent of these were Italians. Today, more than 60 per cent of Argentina's population comes from Italian stock. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (third from left) with his two cousins in Asti, Italy Sparkling: Bricco Marmorito, a first cousin of Pope Francis I, shows a special Grignolino wine bottle, a gift for the new Pope In this undated picture Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, second from left in back row, poses for a picture with his family Humble: Pope Francis was one of 44 new cardinals elevated by Pope John Paul II in 2001 The multilingual Pope's birthplace has been seen as a significant move for the Church, taking the Papacy to a continent in which 42 per cent of the world's Catholics live. It also poses a diplomatic puzzle for Britain, which went to war with Argentina when Bergoglio was rising through the ranks of his national church. While his family hail from Italy, he is first non-European Pope since the Syrian Gregory III in 731.