Pope Leo XIV tried to change his bank information by phone after moving to the Vatican, only to be told he would have to show up in person, a Naperville priest said.
Father Tom McCarthy of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville said Robert Prevost called a bank in South Chicago about two months after moving overseas and identified himself to the bank associate. The employee responded that he would need to come in person, McCarthy said, and asked whether it would matter if the caller said he was Pope Leo. The exchange left McCarthy imagining the awkwardness of the moment on the other end of the line: “Could you imagine being known as the woman who hung up on the pope?”
The story surfaced through McCarthy’s account in Naperville, Illinois, and added a small, human detail to the larger public profile of the first U.S.-born pope. Prevost had already moved to the Vatican when the bank call happened, according to the account, and the problem was not resolved through the call itself.
Instead, McCarthy said the issue was eventually fixed through a friend of the bank’s president. That detail gives the episode its edge: even the pope could not shortcut ordinary bank procedure, at least not at first. The rules held, the call ended, and the fix came later through personal connections rather than papal authority.
The line from McCarthy also captures why the story stuck: “He said...I’m not going to be able to do that... Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” In the end, the question was not whether the caller was the pope. It was whether the bank would make an exception. It did not, and the answer turned on the same kind of paperwork and verification that confronts everyone else.
