Pope Leo XIV Begins 12-Day Latin America Trip Three Weeks After Lung Cancer Surgery

Three weeks after lung cancer surgery, Pope Leo XIV is preparing for the longest and farthest trip of his pontificate: a 12-day, three-nation tour of Latin America. The Associated Press reports that the trip carries more personal and historic weight than any of his earlier voyages.

The U.S.-born Leo is returning to Peru, where the former Robert Prevost lived for two decades as a missionary priest and learned to be the pastor he is today. Leo holds Peruvian citizenship and expressed his attachment to the Peruvian people in Spanish from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on the night of his election. He will also travel to Argentina, the homeland of his predecessor, Pope Francis, to whom Leo owes his pontificate. Francis never returned to Argentina after his 2013 election, a absence that leaves a complicated legacy Leo will have to navigate.

The trip begins Friday in Uruguay, which the report describes as the least Catholic and most secular country in Latin America. Christmas there is officially called “Family Day,” and Holy Week is called “Tourism Week.”

Leo is expected to draw large crowds and to raise issues of concern to his young pontificate, including economic injustice, the situation of Indigenous peoples and the Amazon, and the church’s legacy of clergy sexual abuse. Many observers, however, are focused on his decision to undertake the trip at all. He had surgery on Oct. 13 to remove a cancerous tumor from his lung. When doctors announced that he required no further treatment, they also said there was no medical reason he could not make the Nov. 6-17 journey. The itinerary includes a dozen flights and two helicopter rides, covering 31,000 kilometers (19,000 miles).

The Vatican said no special or additional provisions are planned for the 71-year-old pope, including during his visit to Cusco, Peru, at an altitude of 3,400 meters (11,200 feet). Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said, “We’re not talking of a permanent condition. We’re talking about something that you heal from, because it is surgery.” Maria Montserrat Alvarado, the Vatican’s new communications chief, said Leo “personally confirmed this trip with no changes.”

The final stop in Peru, with arrival in Lima, is widely anticipated, followed by Chiclayo, the diocese Leo led from 2015 to 2023 before Francis summoned him to Rome. Leo told the region’s bishops in September that it was in Peru where he “came to know firsthand the faith of a people from whom I received so much, and I came to understand better what it means to be a shepherd.” Alvarado said Peru “opened his eyes” to the diverse needs of the church, noting that the country “gave him his ministry and inspired who he is as a pastor.” She predicted Leo would speak off the cuff in Spanish during the visit, as he did in June during his trip to Spain, where he appeared more relaxed than his usually reserved public presence in Rome. His calling as a shepherd, rooted in his years of service in Peru, is reflected in these remarks (Colossians 3:23).

Francis never made a return visit to his homeland during his 13-year pontificate, despite opportunities that included his first trip as pope to Rio de Janeiro and later trips to neighboring Chile and Bolivia. Guzmán Carriquiry, one of Francis’s closest friends at the Vatican and the former head of the Vatican’s pontifical commission for Latin America, said he and others repeatedly asked Francis about visiting. “But it was useless, useless! He’d respond with jokes, by staying silent or getting irritated if you insisted.” Carriquiry said Leo was coming to Argentina to “fill a void that has remained,” in much the same way Leo has made trips to Spain and France, two once staunchly Christian European countries that Francis declined to visit in favor of what he called more “peripheral” places.

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