As a boy rising up in a suburb of Chicago, the long run Pope Leo XIV didn’t faux to be a cowboy or a financial institution robber. As an alternative, he preferred to play priest, in line with his eldest brother, Louis Prevost.
“We teased him quite a bit about, ‘Na na na, you’re gonna be the pope,’” Mr. Prevost, 73, recalled in an interview on Friday at his residence in Port Charlotte, Fla.
But it surely got here as a little bit of a shock when Robert Francis Prevost — Rob to his household — was the truth is elected to steer the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.
“My brother’s the pope,” Mr. Prevost, 73, mentioned, sitting on his porch. “Yikes.”
The three Prevost brothers — Louis, Rob and John — grew up in Dolton, Sick., simply south of Chicago, and attended church and faculty at St. Mary of the Assumption on Chicago’s South Aspect. Their father, additionally named Louis, was a college superintendent and their mom, Mildred Prevost, was a librarian.
The long run pope was at all times a peacemaker, Mr. Prevost recalled, though the siblings could possibly be a bit rough-and-tumble of their youth. “Jeez, it was like simply yesterday, I used to be throwing him down the steps,” Mr. Prevost mentioned. “And now he’s pope!”
Mr. Prevost, who has been residing on the Gulf Coast of Florida since 2020, mentioned that he might solely guess at what sort of pontiff his brother could be. “I feel he’s going to be just like Francis, however possibly not fairly as liberal-minded, you realize, flexing the church guidelines fairly a lot,” he mentioned. “I feel he’d be somewhat extra conservative.”
Mr. Prevost described himself as a conservative and a Catholic, including that he and his brother disagreed on some issues. For one, they’d completely different concepts about battle and struggle. Mr. Prevost, who was serving within the Navy when the long run pope was ordained as a priest in Rome in 1982, mentioned that he was not as pacifistic as his brother.
“You come at me, guess what? You’re going to really feel the wrath,” he mentioned. “I’m of that mind-set. Rob, not a lot.”
Mr. Prevost — who enjoys line dancing and, based mostly on his cellphone ringtone, the band Led Zeppelin — mentioned that he had spoken to his brother by cellphone early this week, shortly earlier than the conclave started. Now, he wonders when, or whether or not, he’ll speak to him once more. “I don’t know you can simply choose up the cellphone and name the pope,” Mr. Prevost mentioned. “It’s like calling the president or one thing.”
He added, “I don’t anticipate we’ll see the Popemobile pulling up outdoors.”
However he feels sure that Pope Leo belongs on the Vatican. “He’ll do a bang-up job,” he mentioned.
