After Trump’s Attack on Pope Leo, a Bomb Threat Came for His Brother in Suburban Chicago

John Prevost is a retired Catholic school principal who plays Wordle with his brother the pope every morning. On Wednesday night, police evacuated his neighborhood.

On Wednesday evening, Pope Leo XIV’s older brother, John Prevost, was the victim of a bomb threat.

Officers from the New Lenox police, the Will County Sheriff’s Office, a bomb squad, and K9 detection units descended on the quiet residential street where Prevost lives.

They established a perimeter, evacuated neighboring homes, and closed the road. After a thorough search of the property, they found nothing — no explosive devices, no hazardous materials.

John Prevost is the middle brother of three. He is a retired Catholic school principal who spent 27 years educating children in the Archdiocese of Chicago. He talks to his brother on the phone every day, and each morning the two of them play Wordle together.

In a CBS Chicago interview last May, he described the “disbelief” of watching his younger brother Robert — the kid from Chicago’s South Side — step onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as the 267th Bishop of Rome.

The bomb threat arrived three days after President Trump launched a broadside against Pope Leo on Truth Social.

On Sunday night, April 13, Trump called the pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” after Leo criticized the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Trump claimed credit for Leo’s election to the papacy: “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

In the same post, Trump singled out the pope’s other brother, Louis Prevost of Port Charlotte, Florida, writing: “I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA.”

The president of the United States named the pope’s family members on a platform with tens of millions of followers.

He drew a line between the brother he liked and the pope he despised.

Three days later, the brother Trump did not mention — the retired school principal in New Lenox — had a bomb squad searching his home while his neighbors stood outside.

I have written extensively about the Prevost brothers. Last October, I profiled all three in “Pope Leo’s Brothers — A MAGA Florida Man. A Chicago Liberal. And The Vicar of Christ.”

In November, I published Louis’s first extended interview, and in January, a follow-up after his appearance with Piers Morgan.

John has always been the quieter brother — the one who stayed in suburban Chicago, who kept working at his parochial school and never sought the spotlight while his younger brother ascended through the Church.

Public life holds no appeal for John Prevost. His routine is smaller and more sacred: do work, run errands, come home, and call his brother in Rome to talk about a five-letter word game.

The New Lenox Police Department said in a statement that “making reports of this nature is a serious offense and may result in criminal charges.” The investigation is ongoing.

There is a word for what happens when the most powerful politician on earth paints private citizens as allies and enemies in a political vendetta against a religious leader.

Catholic teaching calls it scandal — not in the tabloid sense, but in the theological sense: an action that leads others toward sin. When a president publicly attacks the pope and names the allies, he, too, suggests the enemies and extends an invitation to the radicalized.

Someone apparently accepted it.

At Letters from Leo, we stand with John Prevost and all the courageous women and men who are too often the targets of violence in this country.

If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for human dignity against a government that punishes faith for speaking truth — I am asking you to join us.

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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.