FLORIDA, Uruguay (AP) — Pope Leo XIV concluded her visit to Uruguay on Sunday by praising women who have passed on the Catholic faith to younger generations, while highlighting the role the Church has played since the founding of Latin America’s most secular country.
Leo traveled to Florida, north of Montevideo, to mark an important Catholic holiday before heading to Argentina for the second leg of his South American tour. This is expected to be the most politically sensitive step, given the Catholic Church’s harsh criticism of the country’s austerity program. Libertarian President Javier Milei.
Leo made the short flight from Uruguay across the river and landed in Buenos Aires, where a military honor guard and Milei awaited him. Crowds waving yellow and white Vatican flags and wearing T-shirts bearing Leo’s image pressed against the airport fence to watch.
For his last event in Uruguay, Leo celebrated the feast of the Virgin of the Thirty-three. According to tradition, 33 independence patriots acquired the Guarani statue and had it with them during the declaration of independence from the Brazilian empire in Florida on August 25, 1825.
Leo became the first pope in nearly four decades to visit Uruguay, hoping to remind his people that the Catholic Church is part of their country. identity as a nation – even if, in the following decades, the country took a deeply secular, and sometimes anticlerical, path.
Pope thanks mothers who passed on the faith
In his homily delivered in front of the Florida Cathedral, Leo recalled the presence of the statue at the time of independence, reminding Uruguayans that “the history of peoples also cannot be fully understood without reference to God”, and in particular to a mother.
He thanked all the mothers and grandmothers who passed on the faith to younger generations and acknowledged their pain when their efforts did not succeed.
“You taught your children to pray, and today they don’t do it anymore. You went to mass together and it’s been years since they entered a church,” he said. But he urged them not to despair.
“Mothers and grandmothers: don’t tire of passing on the faith!
Tens of thousands of people gathered in Florida’s main square for the mass under bright blue skies, some walking several miles to reach the site. The city has around 40,000 inhabitants, but the Vatican estimates there are 50,000.
Fiama Pirez, an English teacher, came from Montevideo for the mass even though she could have seen Leo in the capital. She said she preferred a family outing to Florida so her mother could fulfill her dream of seeing a pope.
“I am religious in my own way, and although I have never strayed from the Catholic faith, I am rediscovering it today,” she said.
A potentially awkward meeting with Milei
In Buenos Aires, Milei must greet Leo at the airport before the two appear together for the traditional welcome ceremony and exchange of speeches. The Catholic Church has criticized Milei’s austerity measures, which cut social spending, as well as his embrace of artificial intelligence.
Milei has staked his presidency on cutting social spending to turn around Argentina’s ailing economy and generate a long-unexpected budget surplus. He called social justice an “aberration” that amounts to theft, and described as “enormous stupidity” Argentina’s increasingly common complaint that families squeezed by its austerity program cannot make it to the end of the month.
Leo, who takes his name from the 19th-century pope whose encyclical on labor laid the foundation for Catholic social teaching, has made the poor and vulnerable a priority of his papacy, continuing the legacy of his Argentine predecessor, Pope Francis.
Posters reading “Finally, a lion that unites” appeared in Buenos Aires over the weekend, a jab at the pope’s name in Spanish – León, or lion – and the lion imagery that Milei often uses to represent himself on social media.
“Argentina is a society currently experiencing significant upheaval, deep polarization and economic crisis, with a president who defies conventional protocols – a leader who, at one point, even defied Pope Francis,” said Luis Bahamondes, a professor at the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Chile.
The Argentine Church sharply criticizes Milei
From taking office in December 2023Milei cut Argentina’s health budget by 48% in real terms. The planned cuts in the public university system, which represent a quasi-universal point of pride in this country in the grip of the crisis, sent the students into the streets.
According to official data, poverty in Argentina reached 32.3% of the population in the first half of 2026, or around 15 million people.
Just like his allies in the Trump administrationMilei’s government presented the budget cuts as part of a reform process necessary to remaking Argentina’s ailing economy and eliminate fraud and waste in the federal bureaucracy.
Like Trump, Milei also courted AI investments and data centers with promises of limited regulation. Leo warned that the race for AI poses a threat to humanity and the environment and called for strict, internationally monitored safeguards for its development.
Milei’s government insists the papal trip is purely religious. “The pope belongs to all Argentines. He does not belong to any political party or camp,” Karina Milei, the president’s sister and general secretary of the presidency, told reporters after a recent planning meeting for Leo’s visit with Church leaders.
A journey to complete Francis’ unfinished business
In Argentina, Leo finishes an unfinished business left by Francis. The Argentine Jesuit, former archbishop of Buenos Aires, never returned home during his 12-year pontificate, confusing friends and foes alike.
“There is a lot of disagreement about Francis and his legacy in Argentina,” said David Lantigua, a theology professor and professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute, who focuses particularly on Latin American affairs.
Much of the controversy stems from his tenure in Buenos Aires, when former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a slum priest who defended the poorest and most marginalized – the sector of Argentines who most felt Milei’s cuts in social spending.
“I think we’ll see that kind of tension with Leo — that’s the ministry that Francis left behind,” Lantigua said.
Leon, who spent two decades as a missionary priest in Peru serving the poor, is a pastor in the image of Francis and owes his pontificate to the late pope. But unlike Francis, he is returning to Peru for the final leg of his journey, visiting a country where he spent two decades as a missionary.
Argentina’s intelligence services said on Saturday that a person had been arrested for making death threats against Leo before his arrival. A federal court in Campana, about 70 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires, ordered the arrest less than 24 hours after the agency was informed, it said, without elaborating.
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Ramiro Barreiro contributed. DeBre contributed from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives AP support collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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