The Vatican announced on Wednesday that Pope Leo XIV would go to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru in November. It will be a homecoming of sorts for Leo, an American who worked and lived in Peru for many years.
Leo will begin his South American trip in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, on Nov. 6. He will visit the cities of Paysandú and Florida before heading to Argentina, where he will travel to Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Luján. In Peru, the longest leg of the trip, he is expected to go to Lima, Cusco, Pucallpa and Chiclayo, a northern city where he served as bishop from 2015 to 2023. He will return to Rome on Nov. 17, the Vatican said.
Leo has no current plans to visit the United States, where he was born. But during an interview with American news outlets last week, he said he planned to go “soon,” probably within the next two years.
Chiclayo will be one of the most anticipated stops on his November trip, which will be Leo’s sixth outside Italy since he became pope. Residents of Chiclayo consider the pope one of their own. He was known for traveling the region’s mountains and coast for long hours by car, and occasionally on horseback.
But Leo was also accused of failing to sufficiently investigate claims by three women in Chiclayo that priests had abused them as children.
Leo, then Robert Prevost, first arrived in Peru as a missionary in 1985 and lived there intermittently — some 20 years in all — until 2023. He obtained citizenship in 2015 because of a treaty between the country and the Vatican, which says that bishops who live in Peru must be citizens.
His return will be in line with the practices of his recent predecessors, most of whom made papal visits to countries with which they had strong personal ties. John Paul II went to his native country, Poland, eight times during his papacy, and Benedict XVI went to Germany, where he was born, three times.
Only Pope Francis broke with that tradition, never returning to Argentina, his homeland, during his 12-year papacy. That is still a sore point for many Argentines.
Leo will be the second pope to visit Uruguay, nearly years 40 after John Paul II did. Catholics make up just 36 percent of Uruguay’s population, less than in any other Latin American country, according to the Vatican media outlet Vatican News.
John Paul visited Argentina and Peru twice during his pontificate. Francis visited Peru in 2018.
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