When white smoke poured out of the Sistine Chapel revealing that a new pope had been chosen, John Prevost turned on his television in New Lenox and called his niece.
They watched in awe as the name of his brother, Cardinal Robert Prevost, was announced.
“She started screaming because it was her uncle,” John Prevost said in an inteview at his home in New Lenox. “And I was in the moment of disbelief that this cannot be possible because it’s too far from what we thought would happen.”
Next, he said he felt an intense sense of pride that his brother had become the 267th pontiff to lead the Catholic church, making the Chicago-born missionary the first pope from the United States.
“It’s quite an honor,” John Prevost said. “t’s quite a once in a lifetime. But I think it’s quite a responsibility. And I think it’s going to lead to bigger and better things. But I think people are going to watch him very closely to see what he’s doing.”
John Prevost described his brother as someone who is very concerned for the poor and those who don’t have a voice. He said he expects him to be a “second Pope Francis.”
“He’s not going to be real far left, and he’s not going to be real far right,” he said. “Kind of right down the middle.”
At one point during the interview, John Prevost realized he had missed several calls from his brother, so he gave the new pope a call back.
Leo told him he wasn’t interested in being part of the interview and, after a brief message of congratulations and discussion in which they talked like any two brothers about travel arrangements, they hung up.
The new pope grew up the youngest of three boys. John Prevost is a year older.
He said he remembers Robert Prevost being very good in school as a kid and enjoying playing tag, Monopoly and Risk.
John Prevost said he knew from a young age that his brother was going to be a priest, though he didn’t expect that he would become pope.
But he said a neighbor did predict that when Robert Prevost was only a first-grader.
“She sensed that at 6 years old,” he said. “How she did that, who knows. It took this long, but here he is, first American pope.”
When Robert Prevost graduated from eighth grade, he left for seminary school.
So, John Prevost said: “There’s a whole period there where we didn’t really grow up together. It was just on vacations that we had contact together.”
These days, the brothers talk on the phone every day, John Prevost said. Robert Prevost will call him, and they’ll tal about everything from politics to religion and even play that day’s Wordle word game.
John Prevost said he’s not sure how much time, as the new pope, his brother will have to talk and how they’ll handle staying in touch in the future.
“It’s already strange not having someone to talk to,” he said.