Louis Prevost opens up to Newsmax about two brothers fighting cancer, daily WhatsApp messages, and watching their parents face the same disease
Louis Prevost does not waste words. When Newsmax’s America Right Now asked Pope Leo XIV’s oldest brother how the Pope was doing after his lung surgery, the answer came quickly: “We were just talking a little bit ago, and he’s doing fine. He’s in high spirits. He was saying Mass. He’s resumed some of his official duties as Pope.”
The two brothers speak every day — by phone, by WhatsApp, trading texts and jokes. Both of them are in treatment right now. Louis has been living with multiple myeloma — a cancer of the plasma cells — for years. When the news broke that the Pope had lung cancer, Louis was just beginning a new round of his own therapy.
“If it hadn’t turned out the way it was,” he said, “we probably would have flown over to Rome just to be in the immediate vicinity and offer that in-person support. Unfortunately, we’re both in the middle of treatments, and I can’t get away from where I’m at. He’s kind of stuck where he is.”
So they do what brothers do: they check in, ask how the other is holding up, and share some jokes.
“You don’t want to focus all the time on your illness and what it may end up resulting in,” Louis said. “You just want to maintain that positive attitude.”
A family that does not quit
Both parents — Mildred and Louis Prevost Sr. — died of cancer in their 70s. The disease is not new to this family. When the interviewer asked how their parents taught the Prevost brothers to face moments like these, Louis went straight to the source.
“It goes back to faith, belief in God and belief in prayer. God wouldn’t put anything on us that we couldn’t handle or wasn’t meant to be.”
He remembered watching his mother come home after chemotherapy. “That was rough on her. That was very rough on the rest of us.” And yet she kept hosting family gatherings, or trying to. “You could tell she was miserable. She still tried.”
The lesson that stuck was as deep as it is simple: “We just didn’t come from a family of ‘I quit.’ It was more: We’re going to fight it to the end, and have faith in God that it’ll turn out the way he wants.”
When Louis was first diagnosed, his brother — not yet a cardinal, recently made a bishop in Peru — offered the same thing. “It was brotherly love. Follow your doctor’s orders. Get a second opinion if you need to. Keep praying. We’re all praying for you.” Nothing spectacular. Just support and prayer and the understanding that this was survivable.
“It’s there,” Louis said of his own cancer, “but it’s under control. It’s not killing me yet, I don’t think.”
Lourdes and what came before
One question the interviewer raised was whether the Pope might have known about his diagnosis when he visited Lourdes in September — the Marian shrine so strongly associated with healing. The footage of Leo XIV there had struck many viewers: he appeared moved, focused, unusually still.
Louis didn’t think so. “He never said anything about even suspecting anything prior. I really doubt that’s the case. It’s just such a holy place — the fact of being there, I guess it can be overwhelming.” As further evidence, he offered a detail that landed with a certain lightness: “When we played tennis, he beat me without a problem. If you have lung issues, you might not be able to run around so well, but he had no problems.”
Prayer works
The distance is hard. Louis was candid about that. The papacy imposes its own logic on access and proximity, and the illness has made it harder. But the daily contact continues, and Louis ended the interview with a statement of principle: “I’ll never turn down prayers. I’m convinced 100% they work. They worked for me at least three times, I swear. And I know they’ll work for him.”