Twelve days, twelve plane flights, two helicopter rides. Nine Masses and 36 speeches. In one six-hour stretch, a flight to a city more than 11,000 feet above sea level to conduct a prayer and blessing service, and another to the Amazon jungle to celebrate Mass.
It’s a schedule that would tax anyone, let alone Pope Leo XIV, 71, who less than four weeks ago was diagnosed with lung cancer and underwent surgery to remove a lobe of his right lung.
Yet this is the itinerary that awaits Leo as he embarks on Friday for Latin America, where he will meet with dozens of politicians, diplomats and bishops as well as visit a prison, universities and facilities for the elderly and disabled. Strong rains connected to the El Niño phenomenon could pummel some of his destinations.
Leo will start his journey in Uruguay, a largely secular country where ambivalence about Catholicism may foreshadow that of Latin America, where participation in the church is declining. On Sunday, he will visit Argentina, the homeland of his predecessor, Francis, who never once returned home as pope. Finally, on Wednesday, he will make a kind of homecoming to Peru, where he spent half his priestly life — and became a naturalized Peruvian citizen — before being elected pontiff last year.
But perhaps the most closely watched aspects of the trip will be the pope’s health and stamina, and how he holds up under the intense schedule.
Leo left the hospital days after his surgery and appeared robust during prayers above Rome’s St. Peter’s Square a day later. Since then, he has held daily meetings, appeared at general audiences in the square and even briefly dribbled a basketball while meeting the basketball teams from his alma mater, Villanova University, and their rivals from the University of Notre Dame, which were all in Rome last weekend.
In the days immediately following the pope’s diagnosis, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, suggested the pope might need to “reshape” the journey. But late last month, the pope’s doctor said Leo would not need further treatment and cleared him to travel without any alterations to the planned schedule. In a statement, citing Dr. Luigi Carbone, the pope’s personal physician, the Vatican said “the Pope is following medical recommendations with great care and diligence.”
Friends of the pope said he did not want to postpone the trip.
“When he commits to it, he commits to it,” said the Rev. Arthur Purcaro, a theologian at Villanova University who served as an Augustinian missionary in the Andes region of Peru with Leo before he was pope.
Leo was probably aware of how much hosts invest in planning papal visits, according to the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, president of Villanova, who has been a friend of the pope since they were students at the university. “Knowing the kind of person he is, I think he would be, like, ‘I don’t want to let them down,’” Father Donohue said.
Vatican officials said there would be no special accommodations for the pope’s health, though he will be accompanied by his usual international entourage.
“He’ll have plenty of medical care on board should something happen,” said Maria Montserrat Alvarado, who heads the Vatican’s communications department. “But we don’t see that in his prognosis or even the way that he’s acting.”
In Peru, Juan José Dioses, a spokesman for the archdiocese of Lima, said local officials were scheduling Leo’s rides in the so-called “popemobile” — the vehicle from which the pope greets the faithful on the streets — so that he would not have to stand for long. And in at least one location in Lima, Mr. Dioses said, the pope can take an elevator rather than climbing stairs.
Although the pope’s official schedule has not changed since his surgery, his handlers might try squeezing in extra rest time for him during the trip, said Francesco Facciolo, former president of the Italian Society of Thoracic Surgery. “Instead of resting for a quarter of an hour, he can take 25 minutes or half an hour,” said Dr. Facciolo, who is not part of the pope’s treatment team.
Fears about Leo’s health on the trip may stem from stereotypes about the severity of his illness. “I think that there is a false impression that if you’re diagnosed with lung cancer, you’re a goner,” said Dr. Lecia Sequist, a thoracic oncologist at Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute and a professor at Harvard Medical School. But “when cancers are caught early,” as the pope’s was, she said, it is quite common “to get back into activities, to get into work and to be able to be active within a few weeks.”
Dr. Sequist said that although high altitudes could put stress on the heart and lungs, “there’s certainly nothing just across the board where we would say, ‘well, if you’ve had lung cancer surgery, you shouldn’t go to high altitudes.’” Leo’s itinerary includes a stop in Cusco, a Peruvian city more than 11,000 feet above sea level.
By visiting more far-flung locales, the pope is showing his care for “people who are on the margins of the economic revolution,” said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, an expert in Latin American theology at Fordham University in New York.
The pope has issued a major teaching document about the need to protect the most vulnerable people from the biggest disruptions caused by artificial intelligence.
In Peru, said Ms. Imperatori-Lee, “nobody who is coming out to see Leo is a tech bro or A.I. giant.”
Leo’s highest-profile meetings will be with two allies of President Trump — President Javier Milei in Argentina and President Keiko Fujimori in Peru. Both encounters could be tense: Mr. Milei has championed unregulated A.I., diverging with the pope. And while serving as a priest in Peru, Leo protested violence associated with Ms. Fujimori’s father, Alberto, who led the country for a decade and was later convicted of rights violations, including murder.
But away from these meetings, the papal voyage will be about showing the faithful that the pope cares about them and is making an effort to reach them, even in distant places.
In scheduling Leo’s stops in Peru, Vatican planners included not only places where the pope could reunite with old friends and associates but also areas that rarely receive papal visits, or where he could show the church’s efforts to collaborate with local cultures. He will go to Pucallpa in the Amazonian rainforest, for example, to meet with missionaries and representatives from local Indigenous communities.
By refusing to cancel any part of the trip, the pope may be trying to remind people that even if he is simply human, he can persist, experts said.
Before his illness, “there was a temptation to think here we have superman, super pope,” said Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister, in a meeting with journalists last month. “The fact that he has fallen ill with, in many ways, one of the most common illnesses of our age, means that he is a poor mortal like the rest of us.”
Reporting was contributed by Julie Turkewitz in Bogota, Colombia, Emma Bubola in Buenos Aires and Josephine de La Bruyère in Rome.
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