“He Corrects Me When I'm Wrong” — Pope Leo’s MAGA Brother Breaks Silence

It’s the first interview Pope Leo’s outspoken brother has given since a flurry of media appearances right after Leo’s election. Louis Prevost, a proud MAGA conservative, has toned down his rhetoric.

Dear friends —

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In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing a series of deeply reported essays that paint the most intimate portrait yet of Pope Leo XIV — not only his life and vocation, but also the people who know him best.

Today’s essay returns to a familiar, complicated figure in the pope’s orbit: his oldest brother, Louis Prevost.

It’s the first time Louis has spoken publicly in months — and it’s the most careful we’ve ever seen him. His new interview with Spain’s ABC newspaper sheds fresh light on the politics of the Prevost family home and offers perhaps the clearest evidence yet that Louis is trying, in his own way, to protect his younger brother’s pontificate.

These essays require time and care to produce — so this article, and the rest in the series, will be available exclusively to paying subscribers. Here’s a full archive for you to explore.

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Read on — and as always, thank you for walking this road with me.

For the first time since the days follow Pope Leo’s election, his oldest brother Louis Prevost is opening up — in a gentler tone than the media blitz right after the conclave (which earned him a loose-cannon reputation).

In this new paywalled interview with the Spanish daily ABC, Louis calls himself a “MAGA conservative” and admits he “clashes with Leo on several issues.”

He knows Pope Leo likely won’t share some of his hardline politics — “for example, my views on immigration policy... We have different opinions on that” and that Leo “corrects [him] when [he’s] wrong.”

Yet despite their political gulf, Louis speaks of Leo with fraternal pride. Here are the top highlights of the interview along a translated transcript below.