You can often find the eldest brother of the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles down at the Twisted Fork restaurant in Port Charlotte, Fla., where, on Honky-Tonk Thursdays, he is most likely boot-scooting along with the rest of the line dancers.
His ringtone plays the opening riffs of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” He incurred $20,000 in roof damage from Hurricane Ian. And until recently, anyone could read his Facebook posts, which included vulgar potshots at Nancy Pelosi and her husband and a pronouncement that supporters of Joseph R. Biden Jr. suffered from a “mental affliction.”
Nearly a week after the Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost became Pope Leo XIV, the world is still adjusting to the fact that he has an American family that does typically American things. The Borgias, for all their many sins, never posted crude or spicy memes to the socials. And indeed, for Louis Prevost, 73, it is the Facebook posts, which he shared online before his brother was made pope, that have earned him the most attention in the last few days.
By Tuesday, the posts were no longer publicly viewable. Among other things, he reposted an old video of Ms. Pelosi, under which the author of the original post referred to her with a vulgar sexist epithet. The original post also insinuated that Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was gay, echoing a misinformation campaign that spread among those on the right after Mr. Pelosi was brutally attacked by a man who broke into his home in October 2022.
The New York Post called the post “awful” and “gross.”
Another post written by Mr. Prevost, according to The Daily Beast, told people to “Keep [their] powder dry,” because there is a “war right here at home, a war for our streets and neighborhoods.”
By Monday, Mr. Prevost was a guest on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” where Mr. Morgan read some of the posts back to him. “It’s quite lively stuff for a bloke who’s now the pope’s older brother,” the talk show host said.
“Well, I posted it, and I wouldn’t have posted it if I didn’t kind of believe it,” said Mr. Prevost, who added that he would “probably tone it down” now that his brother was the Vicar of Jesus Christ.
Mr. Prevost, who described himself to Mr. Morgan as a “MAGA type,” said the new pope was “much more liberal” than he was — although, when asked, he said that he would not necessarily call his brother “woke.” He said he expected Leo XIV to to play things “down the middle.”
During an interview with The New York Times at his Florida home on Friday, Mr. Prevost was photographed in a T-shirt and shorts, sitting serenely on a patio chair. He recalled how his youngest brother was a peacemaker who preferred to play priest when other children pretended to be cowboys or bank robbers.
Mr. Prevost also spoke of his own fondness for line dancing at the Twisted Fork. The conversation made evident the differences between the worldviews of the new pope and his brother in Florida.
While the former called for end to the fighting in Gaza in his first Sunday address, Mr. Prevost said that after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israelis by members of Hamas, “I’d have flattened Gaza and made it a parking lot.”
In his interview with Mr. Morgan, Mr. Prevost said that he had “backed off a lot of media” since being criticized for his online posts, and was looking forward to talking to the pontiff about them and finding out if he had felt any blowback.
“But he knows I am who I am,” Mr. Prevost said of the new pope. “He’s well aware of my positions. He knows I’m probably not going to change, and I don’t think I will, other than to, just as you say, tone it down.”
Charles Ballaro contributed reporting from Port Charlotte, Fla.
Richard Fausset, based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice.
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