The brother of Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, said the newly elected pontiff will likely follow in the late Pope Francis’s footsteps to serve and look out for “those who don’t have a voice.”
John Prevost, one of Robert’s two brothers, said that Francis and Leo were “two of a kind,” noting that his brother will be “looking out for the disenfranchised, he will be looking out for the poor, he will be looking out for those who don’t have a voice.”
When asked how Pope Francis and Pope Leo are different, John replied, “I don’t know that you’ll see a big difference,” noting the two met before Francis became pope.
“I think because they both were in South America at the same time — in Peru and in Argentina — they had the same experiences in working with missions and working with the downtrodden,” he told ABC News on Wednesday. “So I think that’s the experience that they’re both coming from.”
Pope Leo, hailing from Chicago, Ill., became the first American-born pope on Thursday, breaking years of tradition in the Catholic Church.
John told ABC News that his youngest brother always wanted to be a priest, even “playing priest” as a child, where an “ironing board was the altar.” He noted that when Robert was in the first grade, a neighbor told him he would be the first American pope.
Louis Prevost, another brother of Pope Leo’s, described the newly elected pontiff as “down to earth” and “smart as a whip.”
“We used to tease him all the time — you’re going to be the pope one day,” Louis told ABC News. “Neighbors said the same thing. Sixty-some years later, here we are.”
Despite Robert’s frequent travels, the brothers remain in close touch. Before the cardinals went into the secretive conclave, John told his youngest brother that he believed he could be pope, but Robert quickly shut the idea down.
“He just didn’t believe it, or didn’t want to believe it,” John Prevost said.