Today, Pope Leo XIV sets out on the third and final leg of this long journey in Latin America. He will fly 2,200 miles from Buenos Aires to Lima, the capital of Peru, a multi-ethnic nation of almost 35 million people.
Leo has dreamed of making this visit since his election on May 8, 2025. He is the third pope to visit Peru after St. John Paul II (1985) and Pope Francis (2018), but the first to do so as a citizen of the country. He became a citizen in 2015 when Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Chiclayo.
His arrival in Peru will be a homecoming. He spent more than 20 years as a missionary in the country. “He is so excited” to return to this land that “was so important to his ministry,” the new prefect of Vatican communications, Maria Montserrat “Montse” Alvarado, told journalists at a press briefing on Nov. 3. Ms. Alvarado is accompanying him on this 12-day journey in Latin America as part of Leo’s Vatican entourage.
Robert Prevost first came to Peru in 1985 as an Augustinian missionary priest serving in Chulucanas; he later worked in Trujillo and Piura. Indeed, he has spent half of his priestly life working in Peru. He served as bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023, when Francis called him to Rome to serve as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and soon after made him cardinal.
Catholicism has deep roots in Peru, where some 76 percent of its population identifies as Catholic. But Vatican statistics show a significant decline in baptisms and religious weddings between 1980 and 2024, and Leo is likely to seek to give new life to the faith in Peru, as he did in Uruguay and Argentina.
The Catholic Church is carrying out its ministry in a politically unstable and polarized country, marked by widespread corruption. Though rich in resources, Peru’s national poverty level stood at over 25 percent in 2025, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics. This means almost nine million Peruvians are living in poverty, concentrated in metropolitan Lima and Callao.
Since Pope Francis visited Peru in January 2018, its political landscape has been marked by institutional instability, with a rapid turnover of presidents—eight since that visit. There has been intense conflict between the executive and legislative branches of government and systemic corruption scandals, amid growing public protests.
The current right-wing, tough-on-crime president, Keiko Fujimori, was elected in June and will welcome Leo on his arrival. She is the daughter of the authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori, who served as president from 1990 to 2000 and was later imprisoned for human rights abuses.
The first Augustinian pope will spend six full days in Peru and visit four cities: Lima, the capital city, where he will reside at the Vatican embassy; Chiclayo, the diocese in northwestern Peru where he was bishop (his returns there on Nov. 13., the anniversary of the birth of St. Augustine, and the celebration of all the saints of his order); Cuzco, a city at 11,000 feet above sea level in the central Peruvian Andes that was once the heart of the Inca Empire; and Pucallpa, a city in the Amazonian forest in eastern Peru.
On arrival at Lima’s Callao Air Base, he will be welcomed by Ms. Fujimori. He will have a private conversation with her at the government palace before addressing a gathering of state authorities, representatives of civil society and the diplomatic corps. There is great interest in what he will say to the Peruvian officials. Rich in natural resources, the nation is plagued by corruption, political instability and poverty. Many Peruvians are trapped working in the gig economy.
On Nov. 12, Leo will meet Peruvian bishops at the archbishop’s residence in Lima. Afterward, he will celebrate the midday prayer in the Cathedral of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist with the bishops, accompanied by Peru’s clergy, women and men religious, seminarians, synodal teams and pastoral council members. From there, he will go to the square in front of the cathedral for a public meeting on “the challenges and hopes for the future of the Peruvian people,” attended by families and people from the world of culture and business.
In the afternoon, he will meet with members of the Augustinian order in Peru before presiding at a prayer vigil with young people and college students at the national soccer stadium. Leo will conclude the day by dining with the bishops at the Vatican embassy.
On Friday morning, Nov. 13, he will fly from Lima to the coastal city of Chiclayo in northwest Peru, where he will be welcomed by the Augustinian bishop Edinson Edgardo Farfán Córdova who was close to then-Robert Francis Prevost when Leo served there as bishop.
Chiclayo was founded in the 16th century and today is Peru’s fourth most populous city, with a population of around 690,000. Chiclayo is a financial and commercial hub. He will spend two nights in the bishop’s residence, where he lived for over eight years while serving as bishop.
Soon after his arrival, he will celebrate Mass at the Pampas de Pimentel, a vast desert flatland near the city. He will then drive nine miles to pray in the Chapel of St. Óscar Romero in the La Victoria neighborhood of Chiclayo. He has a particular devotion to that community and to the martyred bishop revered for defending the poor against military repression in El Salvador. Leo carries a prayer card and relic of the saint with him. Bishop Prevost secured funds from the church in the United States to rebuild what was once a dilapidated chapel here.
Later in the afternoon, he will address a gathering of clergy, religious and lay people at the large Shrine of Our Lady of Peace. Afterward, he will meet staff and students of the Santo Toribio de Mongrovejo Catholic University, which was opened in 1998 and is sponsored by the bishop of Chiclayo. He will conclude the day at dinner with the priests of the Diocese of Chiclayo at the College of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo.
On the morning of Nov. 14, Leo will begin the day by crowning the statue of the Immaculate Virgin in the Cathedral of Saint Mary before taking a helicopter to Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, the capital of Santa Cruz province at an elevation of 6,500 feet, to celebrate Mass. He will be the first pope to visit there.
That evening, back in Chiclayo, he will preside at a prayer meeting with the Catholic community for the closing of the Jubilee Year of St. Turibius de Mogrovejo, the saintly Spanish missionary bishop who proclaimed the Gospel in Peru and was archbishop of Lima from 1579 to his death in 1606.
On his penultimate day here, Sunday, Nov. 15, Pope Leo will take a flight to Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca Empire in the Andes. As a missionary, he learned Quechua, the indigenous language of the Inca people, by listening to and speaking with the local people.
On arrival at Cuzco, he will meet the faithful and representatives of popular devotion at the Saqsaywaman National Archaeological Park and later pray the Angelus in the square in front of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In the afternoon, he will fly from Cuzco to Pucallpa, a city on the Ucayali River in the Amazonian rainforest of eastern Peru that has long been a center of Catholic missionary work. He will meet with missionaries and representatives of the Amazonian peoples at the Callao Port Terminal and afterward celebrate Mass in the city’s sports complex.
That evening, he will fly back to Lima and spend his last night in Peru at the nunciature.
On Monday morning, Nov. 16, he will be driven to the nearby port city of Callao. There he will visit a shelter for abandoned elderly people run by the Little Sisters, before celebrating Mass at the Las Palmas Air Base.
Ms. Fujimori will bid him farewell at the air base before he boards the plane for the nearly 15-hour flight back to Rome, during which he will hold a press conference.
He is scheduled to arrive back at Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci airport at 10:25 a.m. local time on Nov. 17.
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