It finally feels cool to be a Peruvian American former altar boy who went to Catholic high school and Catholic college.
I knew someday my time would come.
The selection on Thursday of Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, arrived, as my mother put it to me, as a gift from God. Though American-born, the new pope spent years working in my native Peru and even obtained Peruvian citizenship. “An American pope?” my wife asked, incredulous, staring at the television, when Prevost was announced. “A Peruvian pope!” I answered.
The new pope’s status as an American shocked me, and I immediately began to consider the politics and symbolism of the choice. What would this mean for the divides within the American church, for the moral leadership of the United States in the world, for the legacy of Pope Francis? It was my reaction as a journalist, as an observer, peering ahead.
But Leo’s status as a Peruvian made me reach back. I thought of the faithful in Chiclayo, the coastal city in northern Peru where Prevost served as bishop, and the joy his old flock must feel at his ascent. I remembered the American priests, nuns and lay brothers in Lima who educated my sisters and me and, a generation earlier, my mother. I recalled the open-air youth day Mass during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Peru in 1985, when I was 13 years old; it was so hot that day that the authorities sprayed water on us with hoses, as we shouted, “¡Juan Pablo, amigo, el Perú está contigo!” (That’s “John Paul, friend, Peru is with you,” except it’s better when it rhymes.)
These memories were my reaction as a Catholic, as a believer and as an immigrant who made Leo’s journey, though in the opposite direction. I was born in Lima and have spent most of my life in the United States; Leo was born in Chicago and spent much of his life working in Peru. I am a Peruvian who embraced America, and the pope is an American who embraced Peru. It’s a coincidence, nothing more, but seeing the pope on that balcony felt like an odd and unexpected validation for my straddling, my choices, my faith.
John Paul II, the pope of my youth, is my default image for the papacy; not Benedict, not even Francis could displace him. As a kid, I saw John Paul as part pope and part action hero, fighting Communism one day and forgiving his would-be assassin another. It was a point of pride in our family that my great-uncle Alcides Mendoza, who was the youngest bishop at the Second Vatican Council and later became archbishop of Cuzco, helped show John Paul around when he visited Peru. This only cemented the Polish pope’s place in my Vatican cinematic universe.
But there is something distinctive in how I regard Leo, even in these earliest moments. He did not just visit Peru; he lived it and became it, “by choice and by heart,” as Dina Boluarte, Peru’s president, said in a celebratory video. Realizing now that we overlapped there briefly, I imagine him walking our streets, speaking not just Spanish but my kind of Spanish, sharing our joys and our worries, even eating our food. (Already, my mother has forwarded me a hilarious fake image of Leo, in papal whites, digging into a big bowl of ceviche with a bottle of Inca Kola in hand.)
All sorts of people — an ex-girlfriend, old classmates, a colleague traveling in Kenya — have reached out to ask how it feels to have a pope who is both American and Peruvian. All I can say is that it’s a bizarre form of kinship with a person I will probably never meet.
During his first public remarks as the vicar of Christ on Thursday evening, looking onto St. Peter’s Square, Leo briefly stopped speaking in Italian and switched to Spanish. In that moment, his demeanor seemed to change, his solemnity broken by a smile, as if indulging in his own memories, anticipating the impact of his words on a particular community and nation.
“Allow me also a word, a greeting, to all those, and in a particular way, to my dear Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, where a faithful people have accompanied their bishop, shared his faith and given so much, so much, to continue being the faithful church of Jesus Christ.”
That was all. Then he resumed his remarks in Italian. But that interlude brought me to the verge of tears. It was as if he were speaking to me as a Peruvian, but also for me as one who left, as one who found a new home without relinquishing affection for the old one. “I think the part of ministry that most shaped my life was Peru,” he once explained. “I was there for over 20 years.” He said that his time in Peru was a gift and that he hoped every priest could feel the same way about the places where they worked.
The new pope “projects himself as Peruvian in a way,” Jason Horowitz, The Times’s Rome bureau chief, said this week. “He very much sees himself as part of South America as much as North America.” There are so many who feel the same way.
I often caution my kids not to fall too hard for public figures. “They will always disappoint you,” I say. The warning applies to pontiffs as much as to politicians. My relationship to Catholicism has had highs and lows, especially in my adulthood, and even John Paul came off the pedestal he once occupied for me. Will the election of this pope and the serendipity of our shared nationalities strengthen my spiritual or emotional ties to the church? I have no idea. The Holy Spirit acts in weird ways. I know only that in the days and years ahead, I’ll watch Leo both as a faithful Catholic and as a skeptical journalist.
And what can this believer and skeptic conclude so far? Only that if the new pope holds strong views on the plight and dignity of the world’s immigrants, as seems to be the case, these are convictions born not only of faith or compassion but also of experience, of knowing how it feels to adopt a new life and place as your own, to cross cultures and languages and territory, to remain true to yourself even as your sense of self expands.
Pope Leo XIV is both American and Peruvian. After all, “Chicago” and “Chiclayo” almost rhyme, don’t they?
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
Carlos Lozada is an Opinion columnist based in Washington, D.C. He is the author, most recently, of “The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians.” @CarlosNYT
The post Pope Leo, Peru and Me appeared first on New York Times.
