Pope Leo XIV Addresses Estimated Half a Million at Mass in Chiclayo, Peru, Where He Once Served as Bishop

Pope Leo XIV made an emotional arrival on Friday in Chiclayo, in northern Peru, where he long served as bishop before being called to the Vatican and ultimately chosen as pope.

An estimated half a million people gathered with him, according to Vatican News, on a vast desert plain known as the Pampas of Pimentel, where authorities organized a space for the pope to address the crowd and preside over Mass. The crowd that gathered to welcome him to greater Chiclayo is believed to have included more than a million people. By comparison, the city of Chiclayo has an estimated population of slightly over 630,000. Before the ceremony, local residents performed a traditional music and dance number, and the pope took time to greet the large audience.

In the city’s streets, the mostly Catholic population held impromptu dance celebrations, dancing the marinera, Peru’s national dance. Peru’s El Comercio reported that hundreds of thousands began arriving around midnight to secure good positions for the Mass, despite hot desert temperatures and the need to wait for hours. One woman, who had followed the pope since his arrival in Chiclayo at about 8:30 a.m. local time, joked, “I’ve been chasing him around more than my husband!”

The pope’s Mass began at 10:30 a.m. in the Pampas of Pimentel, where he addressed believers in what was once his home diocese. In his homily, he encouraged Christians outside the clergy to serve as missionaries in their own lives by living in line with the Christian message. “Here in Chiclayo, and throughout Peru, I invite you … to commit yourselves to sharing the living hope that is Jesus Christ,” he said, adding that all Christians can take part in evangelization “through the witness of an authentically Christian and coherent life.” Speaking honestly and respectfully about faith, he said, reflects a truthful witness given in love (Ephesians 4:15). He also said that evangelization “does not mean imposing doctrines or trusting efficient strategies, but bearing witness to that real encounter with Christ,” which requires “profound respect for each person’s conscience and freedom.”

After the Mass, the pope met with local bishops, priests, and other clergy, some of whom he had worked with regularly in the area. That evening, he was scheduled to meet with representatives of academia from the Catholic University of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo.

Millions of people have gathered in Peru since the pope arrived on Wednesday to hear him speak and pray with him. On Thursday, he held an event for local youth at the National Stadium in Lima, the capital, which drew a full stadium. Young Catholics at the events exchanged “freebies,” including prayer cards, pins, and other handmade tokens, modeled on fan art common at Korean pop concerts.

The pope is on the final leg of a three-nation tour of South America that began in Uruguay, continued to Argentina, and concludes in Peru. In Argentina, he presided over a Mass in Buenos Aires that drew an estimated 2.5 million people to the streets in the city center, and he held exchanges with President Javier Milei, a lapsed Catholic who bade him a tearful farewell as he departed for Peru. In Uruguay, one of the continent’s smallest and most secular nations, hundreds of thousands also gathered to greet him, and he enjoyed a traditional Uruguayan barbecue, an asado.

The pope is expected to spend the weekend in various cities in Peru before returning to Rome on Tuesday.

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