CHICLAYO, Peru — On the arid plains that forged the vocation of a Pan-American pope, Leo XIV staged an emotional homecoming to his “beloved” diocese in northern Peru, addressing a sprawling outdoor Mass of half a million worshipers on Friday who roaringly welcomed home the man they once knew as “Padre Robert.”
“What a joy it is to return to Chiclayo!” Pope Leo said to the congregation that shaped him more than any other. “It is a blessing for me to be with you once again.”
Ask almost anyone here about the man who became the first U.S.-born pope, and they’ll proudly show you a photo in their phone archives of their former bishop. They’ll tell you about the time Robert Francis Prevost presided over their daughter’s confirmation, the time he sent them a message on their birthday, the time he hand-delivered food to their neighborhood during coronavirus quarantines.
This midsize Peruvian city, more than the Vatican and more than his birth city of Chicago, is the city of the pope. And on Friday morning, as the emotional high point of a three-country tour of South America, the pontiff returned to his chosen home.
It’s the place that taught Prevost, as the local bishop, to lead a community through crisis, from massive floods to the pandemic to a tuberculosis outbreak in a seminary. To embrace local expressions of spirituality often dismissed or outright rejected by Catholic purists. To lay roots in a community so different from his own, and to return to them.
Papal homecomings are rare events, especially one in which a pope has two homes. The first Latin American pope, Pope Francis, never returned to his native Argentina. Perhaps the most stirring in recent memory was Pope John Paul II’s return to Poland in 1979, where he kissed the ground and appeared moved by the overwhelming support from millions of Poles.
Leo’s six-day homecoming to Peru is already harboring echoes of John Paul II’s emotional trip, with the Peruvian-naturalized pope more visibly joyful and moved than he has been on many of his other recent tours. On Wednesday, he appeared misty-eyed and moved while singing the Peruvian national anthem. On Thursday, he joked with warm familiarity during a meeting with top Peruvian clergy, who appeared to rally around a pope they proudly declared had “come home.”
During Friday’s Mass, he thanked those gathered for their prayers and support during an operation to remove a cancerous lung nodule and part of his right lung along with it.
He touched on what first brought him to Peru as a missionary in the 1980s — evangelization. He spoke of a church that, under him, would not be about “imposing doctrines or trusting in efficient strategies, but bearing witness to that real encounter with Jesus Christ.”
After the pope’s flight landed, he abandoned the protocol of formal handshakes to embrace local clerics. His route to the outdoor Mass was lined with 1 million well-wishers. Some in the crowd, overcome by emotion, wept. They held altered Vatican flags depicting Leo as he was years ago here, in simple clothing on donkey back. “Roberto,” one sign read. “You are our pride.”
Cheers went up as Leo’s popemobile made its way through the crowds. Volunteers allowed one young woman to step forward with her 6-month-old daughter, Emma, her eyes watering as the pope blessed the infant. Their family had traveled to Chiclayo for the Mass from Chulucanas, the town in northern Peru where Prevost began his missionary ministry in 1985.
Doris Flores Sanchez, a 49-year-old Chiclayo seamstress, also held back tears as she clutched a Vatican flag with one hand and her heart with the other.
“You can’t know what he means to us,” Flores said. “He took our humble people, the people of Chiclayo, and he made us big. He was one of us, and now look at him! I look at him, and I am filled with pride. … You can say what you want about where he was born, but he is Peruvian.”
Nearly a third of the size of Chicago, Chiclayo is far from the country’s capital and its popular tourist attractions. When tourism plummeted in the pandemic era, Chiclayo planned to organize a gastronomic tour in the hopes of reviving the industry, said David Cardenas, assistant manager for tourism for Chiclayo. Those plans were scrapped on May 8 of last year when the city found itself on the global stage.
Tourism has since increased by 30 percent. Roads have been repaved, and the cathedral is showing off a new coat of yellow paint.
In the Chiclayo city center, the pope is everywhere. There’s a “pope route” with sightseeing relevant to Leo’s life. Chiclayo residents walk around in handmade pope costumes and offer photos with “the pope” for sale. Speakers blast a song written by a Chiclayo musician — “The Pope Cumbia.” A famed local dessert, a cookie sandwich known as a King Kong, has released a King Pope, billboards proclaim.
But beyond the papal swag and tourism push is a deep personal connection, a community of people who never expected to find themselves just one or two degrees of separation from the highest levels of global attention, or of the Catholic Church.
It is a city now inextricably tied to the pontiff, so much so that he chose his longtime aide, a young Chiclayo priest, as his personal secretary in the Vatican, where it is said that only he, Edgard Rimaycuna, and God are constantly at the pope’s side.
Rimaycuna’s parents, Mauro Rimaycuna Chumacero and Edisa Inga Díaz de Rimaycuna, are elementary school teachers who still live in the house where Rimaycuna grew up, just blocks from a church the pope plans to visit. The walls and shelves of their living room are laden with images of Prevost.
A photo above the television commemorates a brief meeting between the parents and Pope Francis in the Vatican. During the encounter, they recall, he said of their home city: “You have a great bishop there.”
On May 8, 2025, Edisa Inga Díaz de Rimaycuna missed the white smoke rising from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel to proclaim the choice of a new pope. She was in class, helping her students with a Mother’s Day project. When she heard from her niece that Prevost had been selected, she began to weep.
“Mom, you can say that your son is the secretary of the pope,” she recalled her son saying on a short call later that day.
Rimaycuna still calls his parents every Sunday, they said. And when they visited Rome in May, the pope set aside time to meet with them. The mother couldn’t help but hug him, she said.
It was clear even before then, she said, that the Pope, and their son, were eager to return home.
“He’s a spiritual man, but he’s also human,” Edisa Inga Díaz de Rimaycuna said of Pope Leo. “As a human being, he needs to be with his people.”
The homecoming gives Prevost a chance to reconnect, briefly, with the priests that became his family.
Jasson Sempertigue Libaque, 36, was Prevost’s secretary for four years in Chiclayo. It was Sempertigue who helped Prevost get back into the sport he loved — tennis. One night, after playing for three hours straight, Prevost was so sore he could hardly raise his arms at Mass.
The bishop, a longtime car lover, insisted on teaching the young priest how to drive. They spent many afternoons in a Volkswagen station wagon, with Prevost in the passenger seat, his hand on the emergency brake just in case.
Sempertigue learned that Prevost had a slight taste for an adrenaline rush. One day, he asked the bishop if he had ever dared to step onto the cathedral roof. Prevost was tempted, Sempertigue said. So the pair climbed the narrow stairs up to the tower and walked across the uneven rooftop, watching the plaza below as an hour went by.
Prevost seemed to connect with Chiclayo culture and its quiet sense of humor. When he’d have a drink with the priests for a birthday celebration, he’d jokingly tell them they’d have a “resaca,” or hangover, in the office the next day, Sempertigue recalled.
He took pride in sharing his American traditions, too. When his home team played, Prevost would don a White Sox jersey and cap to watch the game. The priests, more used to soccer than baseball, would often doze off, Sempertigue said. During one Thanksgiving, the bishop organized a meal and carved a turkey for them all. The following year, the Peruvian priests carried on the tradition for him.
Sempertigue, who has visited Prevost more than a half dozen times since he became pope, said he believes the Holy Father knows Chiclayanos are deeply loyal but that they begin to resent friends and family members who lose contact.
“We get sad very quickly when someone stops talking to us,” Sempertigue said, with a laugh. “Maybe he understands that and thinks, ‘I can’t leave Chiclayanos for long.’”
correctionA previous version of this article gave the incorrect time frame for Pope Leo XIV’s Chiclayo Mass. The Mass was scheduled for Friday, and participants camped out in anticipation Thursday night.
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