Pope Leo continues his trip to South America in Peru

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Pope Leo XIV traveled to his second homeland on Wednesday, returning to the place he says taught him how to be a pastor and where a national holiday awaits him to welcome their beloved “Padre Robert” home.

The visit to Peru marks the final leg of Leo’s three-nation journey South America this tour and its emotional moment, given the more than two decades that the elder Robert Prévost spent in Peru as a missionary priest and later bishop. Having dual American and Peruvian nationality, he is the first pope of each country.

“My heart is so excited that I want to cry with joy,” said Zuly Castillo, who served as Leo’s secretary when he was bishop of the northern city of Chiclayo near the Pacific coast. In front of his office, a life-size cardboard silhouette of the pope now welcomes visitors to his former residence.

“Peru is the crowning achievement of the trip, the homecoming of the first Peruvian pope, no matter where he was born,” said Gustavo Morello, associate professor of sociology at Boston College and author of “Lived Religion in Latin America.”

“It’s definitely a return to the origins,” Morello said.

In preparation for the pope’s visit, a huge 14-meter-high statue of the pontiff was unveiled in the port of El Callao. Baristas in Lima, the capital, offered cappuccinos decorated with the image of the pope.

Popmania also hit Chiclayo. Leo is painted in colorful murals, adorned with T-shirts, baseball caps and even moving head dolls and ice creams.

Leo will celebrate Mass at all his old haunts, including at the nearby shrine of St. Turibius de Mogrovejo in Zaña, a city that is a center of Afro-Peruvian culture and where the pope often went to pray to the saint of his devotion.

As Leo knows his adopted country well, his speeches will be closely followed, particularly the one he will deliver from Lima’s Cathedral Square “on the challenges and hopes for the future of the Peruvian people.”

Peru, a nation of 34 million people, is overwhelmed by challenges, including the looming arrival of the chaotic El Niño weather, violent crime and income inequality. In 2025, 25.7% of the Peruvian population lived in monetary poverty.

“A small elite has GDP levels comparable to some U.S. states,” Morello said, adding that while the macroeconomy “is doing well, most Peruvians live in structural poverty and economic insecurity.”

“This could help strengthen the stability of the political system. Without a doubt, Peru is better today than 30 years ago, when the Shining Path still posed a threat,” he said of the rebel movement that terrorized Peru in the 1980s and 1990s, when Leo was a young Augustinian missionary.

“His return, now pope, inspires great hope within a large part of Peruvian society which still perceives and feels the abandonment of the State,” said Rolando Pérez, professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

“The image of a shepherd who stood with the people, helping to place their demands and their call for justice on the public agenda is deeply etched in the public consciousness,” he said.

Honoring the indigenous people of the Amazon and the threat of flooding

The pope will pay tribute to the indigenous peoples of Peru by traveling to Pucallpa, in the Peruvian Amazon, to celebrate mass. Illegal gold mining and the cultivation of coca leaves, the raw material used to produce cocaine, are affecting Peru’s indigenous peoples.

“The Amazon is a place where critical issues affecting development intersect, such as the environmental crisis, the exclusion of indigenous peoples, various forms of violence and extreme poverty,” Pérez said.

Leo will also meet popular groups of worshipers and representatives of local traditions at Cusco — the capital of the Inca Empire, an important city of Spanish colonial rule and an important cultural destination, including the nearby ruins of Machu Picchu.

The Pope will celebrate Mass in Cusco’s main square, where in 1781 indigenous hero Túpac Amaru II was killed following the largest rebellion against the Spanish in the colonial era.

El Papa and El Niño

El Niño is expected to bring intense rainfall through March 2027 to cities on the Pacific coast, said Alonso Cárdenas, a political science professor at Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University. It will also, he added, worsen an already precarious situation by exposing deficiencies in health infrastructure and increasing the risk of dengue and other potentially fatal diseases.

“The ‘Mega Niño’ is just beginning,” he said, noting that the city of Chiclayo and other coastal cities, including Lima, do not have an adequate drainage system. Because existing sewage infrastructure is outdated, it often puts Peru at constant risk of flooding.

Political instability and calls for answers

Conservative President Keiko Fujimori came to power in July on a promise to restore order to a nation plagued by extortion and homicides, which have nearly doubled to 10.7 per 100,000 people, from 5.8 five years ago.

Cárdenas said Peruvians will welcome the pope at a time when many feel let down by authorities after a decade of political instability that has seen nine presidents rotate since July 2016. Many Peruvians are also hit by growing insecurity and the rising cost of food.

“There is no sign of reaction, no strategy” from the Fujimori government, he said.

As a result, many are hoping for a message from Leo that will elicit a response from those in power.

“There is a deep sense of weariness with politics and corruption,” said Véronique Lecaros, director of the theology department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

In contrast, she said, the Catholic Church enjoys a level of credibility that surpasses any other Peruvian institution.

Huge crowds are expected to welcome Leo home, even though Peru has seen Catholicism fall in recent years. According to the Pew Research Center, the Catholic population was 76% in 2013-2014, but it now stands at about 67%.

This matches trends around the world, where many people continue to join the growing ranks of the religiously unaffiliated. Known as “nones,” they identify as atheist, agnostic, spiritual but not religious, or simply nothing in particular. But Lecaros says that doesn’t mean Peruvians have lost their faith and that most still consider themselves religious.

“They will listen to the pope and some, inspired by his example, will renew their interest in the Church,” she said. “Ultimately, it will depend on how Catholic lay and religious leaders choose to behave. »

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Associated Press writer Franklin Briceño contributed to this report.

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