Pope Leo XIV Begins 12-Day South America Trip Weeks After Lung Surgery
Pope Leo XIV left Rome on Friday morning for a 12-day tour of South America, his first visit to Latin America since his election as pope and the longest international journey of his pontificate — undertaken barely three weeks after surgery for lung cancer.
The 71-year-old pontiff boarded a chartered ITA Airways plane at Rome’s Fiumicino airport at 7.05am local time, beginning what OSV News reported would be a 13-and-a-half-hour flight of more than 6,900 miles to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. He was due to land at 4.30pm local time, where crowds were expected to greet the first United States-born pope.
The trip will take him through three countries and 10 cities before he returns to Rome on the morning of 17 November, covering some 31,000 kilometres (19,300 miles) on 14 flights, including two helicopter rides. He is scheduled to deliver 36 speeches, celebrate nine public Masses, visit seven cathedrals and preside over two stadium prayer vigils.
A gruelling schedule, weeks after surgery
The scale of the itinerary is striking given the pope’s recent health. On 13 October, surgeons removed the cancerous lower lobe of his right lung in an operation for localised lung adenocarcinoma, the most common form of lung cancer. Two weeks later, his doctor confirmed he needed no further treatment and had cleared him to fly.
The Vatican said this week that the pope had completely healed from the operation and that no special precautions were being taken for the tour. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni described the journey as a “homecoming to places where he spent a long time and to which he feels closely connected”.
Leo was born in Chicago and first arrived in Peru as an Augustinian missionary in 1985. He spent more than two decades there as a missionary and bishop, serving as bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023, and became a naturalised Peruvian citizen. The final and longest leg of the trip, in Peru, is built around that personal history.
Uruguay first: faith in a secular land
The pope will spend his first three days in Uruguay, the most secular country in Latin America, visiting Montevideo, Paysandú and Florida. On Friday he was due to address political and diplomatic representatives in Montevideo, and on Sunday he will celebrate Mass at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Thirty-Three in Florida during the annual national pilgrimage to the shrine.
The motto chosen for the Uruguay leg is “I bring you news of great joy” — a deliberate message in a country where the Catholic Church has long operated as a minority faith in public life. Reuters reported that the Vatican expects the visit to draw large crowds, with millions-strong gatherings anticipated across the three countries.
Argentina: honouring Francis, 39 years on
From Uruguay, Leo travels to Argentina for three days, marking the first visit by a pope to the country in 39 years. The late Pope Francis, an Argentine, never returned to his homeland during his 12-year pontificate, and Leo’s visit is expected to honour his predecessor’s legacy as well as his own.
Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, and his absence from Argentina as pope was widely noted during his reign. Leo’s arrival therefore carries a weight beyond protocol: it is the first time in nearly four decades that a reigning pope has set foot in the country, and the first time since Francis’s death that the papacy has returned to his birthplace.
Peru: the homecoming at the heart of the trip
The journey culminates in Peru, where Leo will spend six days from 11 November, visiting Lima, Chiclayo, Cusco and Pucallpa, a city on the Ucayali River in the Amazon rainforest. The motto for the Peru leg is “Let us open our hearts”.
The centrepiece is expected on 13 November in Chiclayo, the northern city where Leo served as bishop for eight years. He will celebrate Mass at the Pampas de Pimentel, a desert plain where organisers expect as many as 1.5 million people to gather. The following day he will take a military helicopter to Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, a mountain town in the Andes, before visiting Cusco, the former Inca capital.
On his final day, 16 November, the pope will meet elderly people in the port city of Callao before celebrating a closing Mass at Las Palmas Air Base in Lima. He departs for Rome, arriving on the morning of 17 November.
For a pontiff who spent his formative years as a priest in Peru, the return is personal as well as pastoral. The question now is whether a 71-year-old still recovering from major surgery can sustain a pace that would test a far younger traveller. The trip also unfolds against a crowded diplomatic backdrop: diplomatic efforts elsewhere continue in the Middle East, Washington’s approach to the region is under fresh scrutiny, and protests sweeping Europe underline the pressures facing governments on both sides of the Atlantic.
