The Pope will spend six days in Peru, where he served as a missionary and bishop before his appointment to the Roman Curia in January 2023.
The Holy See confirmed that Pope Leo will travel to South America in November, visiting Uruguay, Argentina and Peru.
In a statement on Wednesday morning, the director of the Holy See Press Office Matteo Bruni confirmed that the apostolic journey will take place on 6-17 November following invitations from the heads of state and the Church authorities in each country.
The Pope will visit the Uruguayan capital Monteviedo and the cities of Paysandú and Florida, before travelling to Argentina where he will visit Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Luján – site of the shrine of Our Lady of Luján, the patroness of Argentina.
Leo will then spend six days in Peru, where he served as a missionary and bishop before his appointment to the Roman Curia in January 2023.
He will visit the capital Lima and the city of Chiclayo – his former see – as well as the ancient city of Cusco in the Andes and the city of Pucallpa in the Peruvian Amazon.
After a private audience with the Pope in June, Peru’s President José María Balcázar said Leo had given him “permission” to confirm his intention to visit those cities – as well as Piura, in the country’s northwest – in the first half of November.
“We have offered him a helicopter to reach any place he wishes quickly, because he wants to cover as many small towns as possible in the north and also in the jungle and Cusco,” Balcázar told reporters.
The president’s announcement followed an invitation to the Pope from Peru’s Ambassador to the Holy See Jorge Ponce Román at an event in the Vatican in November, during the Peruvian bishops’ conference’s ad limina visit to Rome.
Following the event, the conference president Bishop Carlos Enrique García Camader of Lurín told reporters there was an “80 per cent chance” of a papal visit in November or December.
“The important thing is that he wants to come to Peru because he feels gratitude towards Peru,” Bishop García said.
As an Augustinian missionary, Robert Prevost served in several different capacities in Peru from 1995 to 1998, when he was elected prior provincial of his province in Chicago and later prior general of the Order of St Augustine.
Pope Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo in 2014 and he became its bishop the following year, after he become a naturalised Peruvian citizen as required by the government’s concordat with the Holy See on the appointment of bishops.
The last apostolic journey to Peru was Pope Francis’ three-day visit in January 2018, overshadowed by three days in Chile beforehand during which he faced criticism for a lack of sensitivity to victims of clerical sexual abuse.
Peru has the highest proportion of Catholics of any country in Latin America, accounting for 67 per cent of its 32 million people according to a report by the Pew Research Centre published in January.
The same report found that 58 per cent of Argentina’s 46 million people are Catholic. According Vatican News, Catholics make up 36 per cent of Uruguay’s 3.5 million people, the lowest proportion of any Latin American country.
John Paul II was the last pope to visit either Argentina, in 1987, or Uruguay, in 1988. Francis’ decision not to visit his native Argentina was attributed to his experience of the country’s political tensions as Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
In May this year, the permanent council of the Uruguayan bishops’ conference said there was “a high probability that the Holy Father will visit Uruguay”.
“The possible visit by Pope Leo would be a source of profound joy for the church and for all the Uruguayan people. We remain hopeful and grateful for this possibility,” they said in a statement.
The same month, Argentina’s President Javier Milei and members of his government suggested on social media that the Holy See had confirmed the possibility of a papal visit.
Robert Prevost’s unlikely journey to the throne of St Peter
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