John Prevost told “Good Morning America” he was able to speak with his younger sibling on Thursday for about 30 seconds to congratulate him.
He said that if their parents were still alive they would be feeling “extreme joy” and “extreme pride” about their son, but they would also be concerned as to how he would handle his new role because “it’s a heavy weight on his shoulders.”
“I’m concerned,” John Prevost told “GMA” on Friday. “It is quite a responsibility that he’s going to face now because he’s got the task of trying to bring the world’s Catholics together. I think we’re splitting apart quickly. Maybe he can do something to bring it back. People are leaving the church. There are factions in the church. … I think he’s got to face those things and somehow talk about it and bring people together to talk about it, to get worldwide opinion.”
Before he was Pope Leo XIV, Robert Prevost grew up the youngest of three brothers in the South Chicago suburb of Dolton.
He always wanted to be a priest, his older brother, John Prevost, told ABC News outside his home in Illinois on Thursday.
“He knew right away. I don’t think he’s ever questioned it. I don’t think he’s ever thought of anything else,” John Prevost said.
As a child, Pope Leo XIV “played priest,” John Prevost said. “The ironing board was the altar.”
The pope is a White Sox fan, his brother confirmed. “He’s a regular, run-of-the-mill person,” he said.
Leo started to emerge as a front-runner for the papacy in the days before the conclave began, according to the Rev. James Martin, a papal contributor to ABC News.
John Prevost said he also spoke to his brother on Tuesday, before the cardinals went into the secretive conclave, and told his younger brother that he also believed he could be the first American pope. At the time, his younger brother called it “nonsense” and “just talk,” saying, “‘They’re not going to pick an American pope,” John Prevost said.
“He just didn’t believe it, or didn’t want to believe it,” John Prevost said.
John Prevost said he expects his brother will follow in the late Pope Francis’ footsteps as a voice for the disenfranchised and poor.
“I think they were two of a kind,” John Prevost said. “I think because they both were in South America at the same time — in Peru and in Argentina — they had the same experiences in working with missions and working with the downtrodden. So I think that’s the experience that they’re both coming from.”
Louis Prevost, the eldest of the three Prevost brothers, was feeling under the weather and lying in bed at his home in Florida when the big moment came.
“My wife called to tell me there’s white smoke from the chapel,” he said.
Louis Prevost said he tuned in to the live broadcast of the Vatican announcement.
“They started reading his name, and when he went, ‘blah, blah, blah, Roberto,’ immediately I knew — that’s Rob,” he said. “I was just thankful I was still in bed lying down, because I might have fallen down.”
Louis Prevost said he got out of bed and started “dancing around like an idiot.”
“It’s just incredible,” he said. “I’m suddenly wide awake and feeling wonderful.”
He described his brother as “down to earth,” someone who has a good sense of humor and is “smart as a whip.” He loved his work as a missionary in Peru and being with the people, and through his work with the Vatican has traveled the world, Louis Prevost said.
“I thought I had done traveling in the Navy, but, my God, he blew me away,” he said.
His brother surmised that global experience may have stood out to the other cardinals in electing him pope.
Louis Prevost said his brother seemed to always know his calling, and that as young as 4 or 5, the family knew he was destined for great things in the Catholic Church. When his brothers were playing cops and robbers, Leo would “play priest” and distribute Holy Communion with Necco wafers, Louis Prevost said.
“We used to tease him all the time — you’re going to be the pope one day,” he said. “Neighbors said the same thing. Sixty-some years later, here we are.”
(OTTAWA, CA) — Canada selected a new prime minister-elect on Sunday night, as Justin Trudeau’s reign nears a close amid a trade war with the United States.
Canada’s Liberal Party announced that Mark Carney was chosen to succeed Trudeau after party members voted in a nominating contest between four candidates.
In his acceptance speech, Carney addressed U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada and the threat Trump has posed towards the country, calling the current events the “greatest crisis of our lifetimes.”
“We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves, so the Americans, they should make no mistake, in trade as in hockey, Canada will win,” Carney said.
Indirectly addressing Trump’s calls to make Canada the 51st state of the U.S., Carney added, “America is not Canada, and Canada never, ever will be part of America in any way, shape or form.”
Carney also criticized Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods and said he supports the retaliatory tariffs Canada has imposed on the U.S.
“Donald Trump has put, as we know, unjustified tariffs on what we build, on what we sell, on how we make a living, he’s attacking Canadian workers, businesses and families… we cannot let him succeed and we won’t,” Carney said. “My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect.”
Carney is expected to be sworn in sometime this week by the governor general of Canada, a representative in Canada of Britain’s King Charles III.
The newly elected Liberal Party leader is expected to immediately call for an election as early as late April.
Trudeau, who was first elected prime minister in November 2015, announced on Jan. 6 his intention to resign as Liberal Party leader and prime minister once a new party leader is determined through what he said would be “a robust, nationwide, competitive process.”
The candidates for prime minister included Chrystia Freedman, Canada’s longtime deputy prime minister who, until December, served as Trudeau’s finance minister; Frank Baylis, a businessman and former member of the House of Commons; Karina Gould, a member of Parliment, who served in Trudeau’s Cabinet as minister of International Development and minister of Democratic Institutions; and Mark Carney, an economist who served as governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
Heading into the vote, Carney, who has never held an elected office, had emerged as a front-runner.
Carney, who as governor of the Bank of Canada, is credited with helping to guide the country through the worst of the 2008 financial crisis as governor of the Bank of Canada. Carney has compared the comments of President Donald Trump, who has also threatened to make Canada the 51st U.S. state, to a villain in the Harry Potter series.
“When you think about what’s at stake in these ridiculous, insulting comments of the president, of what we could be, I view this as the sort of Voldemort of comments,” the 59-year-old Carney told supporters at an event in Winnipeg last month.
Trudeau initially said he would serve as prime minister until March 24. He will then be replaced by the new Liberal Party leader.
The Canadian Parliament was supposed to begin its new session of 2025 on Jan. 27, but Trudeau had asked the governor general to extend and not start a new session of Parliament until March 24.
“I’m a fighter. Every bone in my body has always told me to fight because I care deeply about Canadians. I care deeply about this country, and I will always be motivated by what is in the best interest of Canadians,” Trudeau said when he announced his plans in early January to resign.
At the time, Trudeau said he believed his resignation would “bring the temperature down” and allow Parliament to reset and get back to work “for Canadians.”
“Parliament needs a reset, I think, needs to calm down a bit and needs to get to work for Canadians,” Trudeau said when answering reporters’ questions following his announcement. “Removing me as the leader who will fight the next election for the party should decrease the polarization that we have right now.”
Support for Trudeau’s party has declined steadily for months, with the Liberals falling in early January to their lowest level of support in years, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In recent days, Trudeau has emerged as the face of Canada in a trade war that erupted with the United States over 25% tariffs that Trump imposed on products from Canada.
Canada countered by imposing a 25% tariff on goods from the United States, including American orange juice, peanut butter, coffee, appliances, footwear, cosmetics, motorcycles, and certain pulp and paper products.
Canadian Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said a second wave of retaliatory tariffs would be suspended after Trump announced on Thursday that he is pausing for a month tariffs on some products from Canada and Mexico.
(WASHINGTON) — Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are expected to speak on Tuesday as the White House continues its campaign for a ceasefire and eventual peace deal to end Russia’s devastating war on Ukraine.
“It’s a bad situation in Russia, and it’s a bad situation in Ukraine,” Trump said on Monday. “What’s happening in Ukraine is not good, but we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it.”
Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, his new administration has sought to bring an end to Russia’s war by berating and pressuring Kyiv. Trump has repeatedly said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zeleneskyy “does not have the cards” to come out on top of the negotiations.
Meanwhile, Moscow has been offered normalization and hinting at territorial gains and sanctions relief.
Thus far, the carrot has been for Russia and the stick for Ukraine.
There remains only a slight indication of what concessions Trump is seeking from Russia. “When we talk about leverage, it suggests that he wants to use this leverage to get some concessions from Russia,” Oleg Ignatov, the International Crisis Group think tank’s senior Russia analysts, told ABC News.
“But is he really interested in serious concessions from Russia or not?”
Does Trump have ‘the cards’?
The president has hinted at ramping up pressure on the Kremlin if it fails to commit to peace talks. “There are things you could do that wouldn’t be pleasant in a financial sense,” he said last week.
“I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia,” Trump added. “I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.”
Earlier this month, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED.”
The implementation of tariffs — a cornerstone of Trumpian foreign and economic policy — would be only a symbolic measure, given that Russian exports to the U.S. have fallen to their lowest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In a possible preview of things to come, the White House has already expanded the unprecedented sanctions campaign kicked off by former President Joe Biden in 2022.
This month, the administration said Russians were among 43 nationalities being considered for travel bans. It also allowed to lapse a sanctions exemption allowing Russian banks to use U.S. payment systems for energy transactions.
Trump may seek to further tighten the screws on Russia’s economy, in which inflation is rising and dollars are increasingly difficult and expensive to access.
“What the U.S. can do is put even more pressure on the Russian financing sector, increasing the sanctions against banks that that basically also have a stake in the oil and gas sector in order to compromise the financial sustainability of the Russian Federation and make it basically unsustainable for Russia to continue the war,” Federico Borsari of the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank told ABC News.
The U.S. may also seek further action to identify and penalize vessels in Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet,” by which Moscow has been able to continue exporting its fossil fuels and avoid sanctions, Borsari added.
Still, Russia has shown an ability to adapt to and skirt sanctions, even if the measures have undermined the national economy. The impact of new sanctions may not be immediate enough to force Putin to the negotiating table, Ignatov said.
Seeking to further curtail Russia’s energy exports or expanding secondary sanctions — meaning measures against those still doing business with sanctioned entities — may also bring the U.S. into conflict with key Russian customers like China and India.
“There is no magic bullet in terms of sanctions,” Ignatov said.
Putin’s hand
Trump has praised Putin’s supposed readiness for peace, instead framing Ukraine and Zelenskyy as the main impediments to a deal. Still, Moscow has shown no sign of downgrading its war goals, which still include the annexation of swaths of its neighbor, the “demilitarization” of Ukraine and its permanent exclusion from NATO.
Putin was non-committal to last week’s U.S.-Ukraine proposal of a 30-day ceasefire. Moscow is “for” the pause, the president said, but framed any pause as a military benefit for Kyiv and said several difficult conditions would need to be fulfilled before the Kremlin would give its full support.
Russia “needs” a pause in the fighting to reform its own shattered military, Pavel Luzin — a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy — told ABC News. “But at the same time, Russia does not have desirable conditions on the battlefield.”
“What Russia has been trying to do since the fall of 2022 is defeat a big group of Ukrainian forces as a pre-condition for negotiations about a break,” he added. “Russia wanted to demoralize the Ukrainian leadership and society. After two-and-a-half years, Russia was not successful.”
Ignatov said Moscow’s recent engagement with the Trump administration does suggest an appetite for some kind of deal.
“I think both Russia and the U.S. are looking at this negotiation seriously,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that both sides are thinking about any good deal for Ukraine, but I think that both sides want to finish this conflict.”
The Russians, he added, “want to avoid a direct confrontation with Trump, because they really value this process of normalization. I think what they tried to do is to decouple Ukraine from the normalization of the other issues. Even if they don’t succeed on Ukraine, they want to continue to work on other issues.”
Still, Moscow is “not ready to sacrifice their interests” in Ukraine, Ignatov continued. “They are not ready to make very big concessions — serious concessions, to leave territories or something like this.”
Opportunity, crisis for Ukraine
Trump’s radical pivot away from Ukraine in the opening months of his second term left Kyiv and its other foreign partners reeling. Though the pause to U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing was brief, it rattled leaders and commanders in Kyiv.
“We consider this turbulence to be part of negotiations, which I think was quite often used by Trump in his past when he was in business,” Yehor Cherniev — a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and the chairman of his country’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly — told ABC News. “So, we understand.”
Trump’s inherent unpredictability has given Ukrainians hope that his interactions with Putin may not necessarily play in Russia’s favor.
“Trump should say directly: ‘Vladimir, if you don’t agree unconditionally to my proposal then I’ll have to make a deal with a new leader of Russia instead of you,'” Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee, told ABC News. “If he tried it with Zelenskyy, then why not with Putin?”
A threat to expand American military aid to Ukraine could give such coercion bite, analysts and Ukrainian lawmakers who spoke with ABC News said.
Lifting restrictions on U.S. weapon use inside Russia, requesting more military aid funding from Congress, replenishing supplies of long-range ATACMS missiles and delivering new long-range strike weapons like the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile could all underscore the U.S. demand for Russia to negotiate.
But such steps would run counter to Trump’s repeated statements that the war must end as soon as possible — with or without American involvement.
“I’m not sure if he has any desire to escalate the war, because he’s the ‘peace president,'” Ignatov said, noting that any request for more funding from Congress could also touch off unwelcome domestic political disputes.
“He’s said that if we are not able to succeed, the U.S. will be out of the war,” Ignatov added. “So, it means that he is not going to escalate.”
It remains to be seen if Trump’s ambition for a deal will be enough to overcome the decades-long complexity of Russia’s aggression against its “brotherly nation,” as Putin was still describing Ukraine months into the 2022 full-scale invasion.
“The Russians have quite clearly showed already that they are not ready,” Cherniev said. “Now there are not so many options for Trump’s administration.”
“Trump wants to be a peacemaker,” he added. “If he just leaves these negotiations, that will mean that Putin wins. And I doubt that Trump will allow Putin to win.”
Trump’s turn against Ukraine begun to erode the trust built up by decades of American backing. But for now, at least, some hope remains.
The president “might” ultimately side with Moscow, Merezhko said. “But that goes against American values — Americans and public opinion in the U.S. have always been on the side of the underdogs.”
(LONDON) — The Israeli military on Tuesday issued an evacuation warning for Yemen’s Sana’a International Airport, saying being in the nearby area “exposes you to danger.”
Avichay Adraee, the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic spokesperson, posted the warning on social media two days after a ballistic missile launched from Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthis struck near Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel.
“We call upon you to evacuate the airport area — Sana’a International Airport — immediately and warn everyone in your vicinity of the need to evacuate this area immediately,” Adraee said. “Failure to evacuate and move away from the place exposes you to danger.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
