Pope Leo XIV Embarks on Lengthy Latin America Pilgrimage Amid Health Recovery and Regional Challenges

Pope Leo XIV is returning to the continent where he spent two decades as a missionary priest and honed his pastoral vision, visiting Uruguay, Argentina, and his adopted homeland of Peru. The 12-day journey, scheduled for November 6–17, marks the longest and most distant trip of his papacy to date. It comes barely three weeks after the pontiff underwent surgery on October 13 to remove a cancerous tumor from his right lung, though medical officials have cleared him for travel.

Latin America remains home to roughly 40% of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, yet the Church’s share of the regional population has contracted in recent years—a trend particularly pronounced in the three nations on the itinerary.

The visit opens in Uruguay, a country where secularism and the separation of church and state are so deeply entrenched that Christmas is officially designated “Family Day” and Holy Week “Tourism Week.” While Vatican statistics indicate nearly 77% of Uruguay’s 3.5 million people are baptized Catholics, over half the population identifies as religiously unaffiliated—the highest rate in Latin America—and only a small fraction of self-identified Catholics attend Mass regularly.

Leo’s schedule includes a stop at a parish in Casavalle, an impoverished Montevideo neighborhood beset by drug trafficking and gang violence. The church there collaborates with national and municipal authorities on support initiatives, including housing construction and addiction recovery programs. He will also celebrate Mass in Paysandú, some 375 kilometers (230 miles) from the capital, a location chosen for its accessibility to communities north of the Río Negro and its proximity to the Argentine city of Colón.

The visit begins with a welcome ceremony at Montevideo’s Plaza Independencia, a historic square anchored by a monument to independence hero José Gervasio Artigas. Perhaps most significantly, on November 8 the pontiff will mark the feast of the Virgin of the Thirty-Three, Uruguay’s patroness and an icon woven into the nation’s history and patriotism. Tradition holds that 33 independence patriots carried the small wooden Guaraní statue when they declared independence from the Brazilian Empire in 1825, entrusting their cause to the Virgin. By honoring this feast, paying homage to Artigas, and celebrating Uruguay’s independence, Leo is expected to underscore that the country’s secular identity is intrinsically linked to its Catholic heritage—suggesting faith retains a place even in the most secular societies.

In Argentina, the legacy of Pope Francis—who never returned to his homeland as pontiff and whose tenure as both archbishop and pope proved polarizing—will loom over Leo’s visit. The American-born pope will formally honor his predecessor at Buenos Aires’ cathedral and symbolically at the federal prison where then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio ministered to inmates. He will also meet with President Javier Milei, a libertarian who once denounced Francis as “the representative of evil on Earth” but later apologized. Milei’s aggressive spending cuts have strained relations with Argentine church leaders, who have criticized reductions in disability funding and the prioritization of economic orthodoxy over the needs of the poor.

That tension will be visible when Leo visits the Don Orione care home in Claypole, south of Buenos Aires, a Catholic institution housing more than 400 people with disabilities. The facility reports severe financial distress due to spending cuts, outdated reimbursement rates, inflation, and state payment delays. At the Argentine Catholic University, the pontiff will hear from business leaders, trade unions, workers, and social representatives; union leaders plan to brief him on rising unemployment, poverty, and the erosion of household purchasing power. Official data indicate poverty reached 32.3% of the population in the first half of 2026, affecting approximately 15 million people.

Another potential flashpoint involves artificial intelligence. Milei, an ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, has courted AI investment and data centers with promises of light regulation, while Leo has warned of the threats AI poses to humanity and the environment, calling for strict, internationally enforced safeguards.

Leo will celebrate his first Mass in Argentina at Buenos Aires’ Monumento de los Españoles, where St. John Paul II prayed for peace on June 12, 1982, during the Falklands War. John Paul II, who also visited in 1987, remains the only pope to have traveled to Argentina. When Francis was elected, about 71% of Argentines identified as Catholic per Pew Research Center; that figure has fallen to 58% in 2024. Yet popular devotion persists: despite persistent rain this year, a record 2.8 million people participated in the annual pilgrimage to the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Luján, Argentina’s patroness.

The emotional centerpiece of the trip will be Leo’s return to Peru, especially his former diocese of Chiclayo, a sprawling city near the northern Pacific coast. He will celebrate Mass across his old stomping grounds, including the mountain village of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba. Having spent two decades ministering in Peru as a missionary priest and later as bishop, Leo credits the country and its people with shaping his ecclesial vision. Because he knows the nation intimately, his addresses—particularly one delivered from the square before Lima’s cathedral on “the challenges and hopes for the future of the Peruvian people”—will be closely scrutinized.

Peru, a nation of 34 million, grapples with the climate chaos of El Niño, violent crime, poverty, and inequality. In 2025, 25.7% of the population lived in monetary poverty. Conservative President Keiko Fujimori took office in July pledging to restore order amid rampant extortion and homicides. Illegal gold mining and coca cultivation—the raw material for cocaine—disproportionately harm Indigenous communities.

Leo will meet with popular groups in Cusco, the historic Inca capital and a major cultural hub near Machu Picchu, where he will celebrate Mass and pray in the main square—the site where Indigenous rebel leader Túpac Amaru II was executed in 1781 after the most significant colonial-era uprising against Spanish rule. He will also travel to Pucallpa in the Peruvian Amazon to honor the country’s Indigenous peoples with a Mass. Enormous crowds are expected to welcome him home, even as Catholicism has declined: Pew data show the Catholic share dropped from 76% in 2013–2014 to roughly 67% today.

Source link