Louis Prevost reflected Friday on watching his younger brother, Robert Francis Prevost, become Pope Leo XIV live on television: “Holy cow, this is nuts.”
“It’s shocking, mind-numbing, mind-blowing. How do you describe that? I don’t know,” he told NewsNation. “I still haven’t figured out how to tell anybody what I feel, other than out of my head, crazy with happiness, pride, joy, love for my brother.”
Louis discovered his brother had become the 267th, and first American-born, pope in the history of the Catholic Church the same way everyone else did — by waiting for white smoke to emerge from the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.
“When he made his appearance, then it became real,” Prevost said. “It’s one thing to hear the name, but when Rob came out onto the balcony and we saw him, it just brought tears to my eyes. You know that’s my little brother. He’s now pope.”
He added that he always had an inkling his brother would be presiding over Mass, albeit maybe not as the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics.
“I don’t know how to describe it spiritually,” he told NewsNation. “He was special. When we were kids and went to play games, he wanted to play priest. How many little kids want to play priest, you know?”
The Chicago family of three siblings all attended Catholic schools.
“As soon as he got out of eighth grade, he went directly into the seminary,” the pope’s older brother said. “It was like he knew what he wanted to do, and more power to him, and he’s been quite successful at it, right?”
Prevost noted that he could see his younger sibling becoming a sort of “traveling pope,” trying to bring peace.
“Maybe he’ll actually go to some of these countries that are fighting, or on the verge of fighting, and try to talk to the leaders there and say ‘There’s a better way to do this than to kill each other,’” he added.
Pope Leo XIV is the successor of the late Pope Francis who died last month at the age of 88.
