Crux

As Pope Leo XIV passed the 100-day mark in his pontificate, one native Chicagoan – Leo’s own older brother, John Prevost — said the new pontiff is having a good time of it in the job so far.

“He seems to be perfectly at ease,” the 71-year-old John Prevost told Chicago local NBC affiliate 5Chicago television in an exclusive interview that aired this week. “He seems to be enjoying it,” the middle brother of the three boys – Louis Jr., John, and Robert – born to Louis and Mildred Prevost said, “this is a natural.”

John Prevost, a retired school principal, told 5Chicago life has been busy for him since his baby brother’s election on May 8^th.

“It’s non-stop,” Prevost said. “People know who I am when they see me. They seem to think I look like him,” he said, admitting “there might be a family resemblance.”

Prevost told 5Chicago much of the attention has been good, and some of it – like constant prayer requests – sometimes difficult. “It’s been – some of it – good,” he said. “Some of it’s been kind of sad, a lot of it unexpected,” he continued.

“I get letters almost daily,” Prevost said, “to ‘please, have your brother pray for my son, who has got a debilitating disease, we’ve tried – we’re looking for a miracle.’ Those things are sad.”

The election of John Prevost’s brother, Robert Francis Prevost, has also been an occasion for discovery of the family’s history.

Prevost said it was news to him when the family tree compiled by the eminent Harvard historian and genealogist, Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry, American Ancestors, and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, discovered his family’s Creole roots.

“We knew nothing of that,” Prevost said, quickly adding, “let me change that – I knew nothing of that. When we talk about, that this is a pope of the people, boy, is he a pope of the people!”

Leo still makes time for his brother, too.

“We do the Wordle and we do the Words With Friends, and now I usually ask him, ‘Who did you meet [who is] famous?’”

Asked whether he has any inside knowledge of Leo’s plans to visit his native city, John said, “The only thing we know for sure is, he’s going to be here for my funeral,” making sure to add that he isn’t sick.

To hear John Prevost tell it, his baby brother responded playfully.

“They may have to keep the body on ice for a while,” John recalled his brother the pope telling him, “but I’ll get there.”

The brothers’ sense of humor was on display in the interview, with John – the middle brother – giving Leo, the youngest, as good as he got.

“The oldest is an experiment,” Prevost said. “The youngest gets spoiled,” he continued. “The middle,” he concluded, “comes out right.”

John Prevost also said he is more careful of his privacy these days.

“I no longer answer the phone unless I know who it is,” he said. “I try to behave a bit better, maybe,” he also said.

Prevost did tell a story about a call he placed to a kind Chicagoan who had Aurelio’s pizza – his famous brother’s favorite – sent to Rome, with the phone number in the order. “Let’s call him,” Prevost recalled Leo suggesting.

“So, we did dial that number, and the man answered the phone, and I said, ‘Is this Mr. —–? Because I don’t remember the name, and he said, ‘Who’s calling?’ and I said, ‘John Prevost.’ ‘Who?’ ‘John Prevost.’ ‘Are you, by any chance, the brother of the pope?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir, I am.’ He said, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ [And I said,] ‘On the line to talk to you is the pope’.”

John Prevost also showed he could have the sort of keen eye that makes for a good Vatican analyst.

“Pope Francis gave him another title just before his death,” Prevost said, remembering how Francis raised his brother to the rank of cardinal bishop mere months before he passed. “He’s signaling something here,” Prevost said.

Prevost also recalled a particular of the 2023 consistory in which Francis created his brother a cardinal. “Why was my brother named first?” Prevost wondered. “What was the pope saying by calling him up first? It wasn’t alphabetically, it was – so, those things signaled to me.”

“[They were] very close,” Prevost also said of the relationship between his brother – now Pope Leo XIV – and Pope Francis. “They were very good friends,” he said.

Having a brother become pope may well be the archetypical “hometown boy makes good” story, but John Prevost suspects the brothers’ parents would be quietly proud of their son, were they alive.

“I don’t know that they would go around bragging, because they weren’t bragging people, you know? I don’t think you’d see my mom saying, ‘Well, my son is the pope.’ I don’t think that would happen,” Prevost said.

Prevost said he thinks his brother is doing a good job so far.

“Oh, I definitely think the Church is in good hands,” he said. “I think, what people don’t know is, he’s taking this very seriously.”

“It may not look look [like it] when you see him enjoying himself,” Prevost said, “but this is quite a burden on his shoulders and he’s praying for the world.”