ROME – Pope Leo XIV’s brother John Prevost said after his younger sibling’s election as 267th leader of the Catholic Church Thursday night that it had been a shock and he couldn’t believe it.

“It was a shocking moment,” Prevost said.

“I was on the phone with my niece and we couldn’t believe it. Then the cell phone, the iPad and the home phone went crazy,” he described for the first time to the media the moment his 69-year-old brother Robert’s election as pontiff.

Leo XIV is the youngest of three children, raised by a father who is a school superintendent and a mother who is a librarian in the southern suburbs of Chicago.

“We had a normal childhood. It’s a little strange, but all three of us knew what we wanted to do from an early age,” said the 71-year-old former principal of a Catholic school.

“Rob knew he was going to be a priest from the time he could walk,” John said.

“A neighbor once told him he would be pope one day. That was a good prediction, right?” The pontiff’s brother said they spoke on the phone the night before the conclave began and discussed what name he would choose if he were elected pope.

“I told him not to choose Leo because he would be 13th (an unlucky number, ed.), but he apparently did some research,” he said. PNA/ANSA