Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno, S.J., the emeritus archbishop of Huancayo, spoke about Pope Leo’s visit to his homeland and what it means to the Peruvian people, in this interview conducted by email with America, on the eve of the Nov. 11-16 visit, which he said “will be an experience of love, hope and renewal.” He knew Robert Prevost well from his years in Peru and said, “He will find a country ever more ‘troubled and abandoned.’” He expects his visit “will help us break silences, overcome indifference and return to what is essential” because “in the encounter with Jesus Christ, joy is born and born anew.”
Cardinal Barreto was born in Lima in 1944. He joined the Jesuits and was ordained a priest in 1971. Pope John Paul II appointed him apostolic administrator of Jaén in northern Peru in 2001 and archbishop of Huancayo in the central highlands of the Andes region in northern Peru in 2004. Pope Francis had him stay on as archbishop until the age of 80 in 2024. He played an important role in the Synod on the Amazon and served as the vice president of the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network. He also served as the president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon, a new body created to promote synodality and shape a church with an Amazonian face while seeking new paths for evangelization and for an integral ecology. Because he was over the age of 80, he did not vote in the conclave that elected Pope Leo.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How would you describe Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Peru?
Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic visit has stirred enormous enthusiasm among Peruvians because he is someone they know and love.
Peru, as part of Latin America and of the Amazon, follows in the footsteps of the Second Vatican Council, and we recognize ourselves in Leo XIV on the path of a synodal church that listens, discerns and proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ today. That is why his presence in Peru as shepherd of the Catholic Church holds such special meaning: He is coming home. He returns to the country that took him in and that he made his own. People were moved when, on the day of his election, he spoke in Spanish from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to his “beloved Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, where a faithful people has accompanied its Bishop, shared its faith and given so much, to continue being a Church faithful to Jesus Christ.” For all these reasons, his visit to Peru will be an experience of love, hope and renewal.
Pope Leo XIV knows Peru well and served as bishop of Chiclayo. How do you think that pastoral experience might shape the way he meets the Peruvian people on this trip?
Pope Leo is deeply bound to Peru, to its peoples and communities. He knows the coast, the highlands and the Amazon. Yet he will find a country ever more “troubled and abandoned,” where people walk “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36). Many Peruvians feel unsafe, unprotected and abandoned by institutions that cannot respond effectively to violence, insecurity, the spread of organized crime and impunity. The number of extortion cases in Peru rose from 1,640 in 2021 to 14,206 in 2025.
The deepening of conflict; social, political and religious polarization; rising violence, organized crime, corruption and inequality; the situation of young people; and the challenges we face within our own church: All of this weakens our democratic life together and our trust in institutions. We are a country without hope, without horizons to set us in motion.
The presence and message of Leo will encourage the Peruvian people and its institutions to create a space for dialogue that is “unarmed and disarming,” one that respects the dignity of every human person and seeks the common good. We can expect a demanding message, one that makes possible communion, participation and action for justice and peace, putting the poorest and most excluded first.
You worked closely with Pope Francis on the Amazonian synodal journey and have spoken with gratitude of his support for the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network, known as REPAM, and the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon, known as CEAMA. What part of Francis’ legacy do you consider essential to preserve and develop for the church in the Amazon today?
These two ecclesial bodies are a genuine expression of the option for the poor that the church embraces in fidelity to the Gospel. Jesus himself names it as a sign that the kingdom of God is present among us: “the poor have the good news proclaimed to them” (Lk 7:22).
Catholic missionaries have been present in the Amazon from the 16th century to our own day. They have taken on the responsibility of accompanying Indigenous peoples, proclaiming the Gospel and promoting their integral human development.
To make that work more apostolically effective, Francis created REPAM in 2014, whose mission is to accompany the Amazonian peoples within their own cultures and territories through a network that coordinates pastoral action across the region. CEAMA, created in 2020, sets priorities for the pastoral goals and strategies of the church’s new paths of evangelization in the Amazon.
First, Francis chose a place: the Amazon, home to Indigenous peoples of many cultures and languages who have historically suffered persecution and death. The Amazon River basin, some 2.9 million square miles, is a living ecosystem, which Francis called one of the “lungs” of the world that we must care for.
Second, Francis began a process of listening, discernment and coordinated pastoral action, the fruit of synodal spirituality. In this way, the church took up the path of renewal. To that end, he convened a Special Synod for the Amazon in 2019, which concluded with a final document. Francis also gave us the apostolic exhortation “Querida Amazonia” in 2020.
With this synodal experience, the church in the Amazon makes its contribution to the synodal process of the universal church. That is Francis’ principal legacy, and Leo XIV is carrying it forward and deepening it.
In your personal conversations with Pope Leo XIV, what impression did you form of how he has embraced the renewal of the church in the Amazon that Pope Francis set in motion with the creation of REPAM and CEAMA?
This question leads me to highlight a gift of the Holy Spirit to the church: newness and continuity in the succession of two bishops of Rome. I have come to know both personally. They are two different popes in personality and temperament, yet firm and resolute in what is essential: following Christ and renewing the life and mission of the church. They knew each other and worked very closely during the last two years before Pope Francis’ death and Pope Leo XIV’s election.
Francis was born in Argentina; Leo XIV was born in the United States and became a naturalized Peruvian. One is Latin American, the other pan-American. Both are resolved to proclaim to all humanity the good news of Jesus crucified and risen. They do not compete. They complement each other. One sows the word of God, the other keeps sowing, and God makes it bear fruit in the church. That is the truest expression of unity in diversity!
Francis was the pope of kairos, the opportune time, who placed the emphasis on charism as the free gift of the Holy Spirit. That is why in his encyclical “Evangelii Gaudium,” he spoke of a church that goes forth on mission, the primacy of discernment over rules and synodality as listening to the Holy Spirit in the people of God. The church is born of Pentecost. It is not a human project.
Leo XIV is the pope of chronos, measurable time, who is placing the emphasis on the institution. An ecclesial body is needed to safeguard the charism as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Without charism, the institution becomes empty and lifeless and does not endure through history. Without the institution, charism becomes a passing emotion, with no continuity and no real bond among its members.
The Second Vatican Council emphasized the church’s pastoral mission and sought to renew the moral and spiritual life, the organization and the language of the Catholic Church, to bring it closer to the people of the 20th century.
Faced with this immense conciliar task, Francis was the bulldozer. He opened the road. He broke down walls. Strong and forceful, firm in his principles, disconcerting in his proposals. Courageous in defining the church’s mission. He marked out the way, with his eyes fixed on Christ and on the direction of the Second Vatican Council. He sought to renew the church to make it more effective, as an apostolic body, in its pastoral mission in today’s world.
Leo XIV is the road grader. He smooths the road that has been laid out so that every baptized person in the church, and all people of good will, can travel it. His tone of voice, his words and his way of communicating are “unarmed and disarming.” He is firm and direct about the goal: He does not abandon the principles of the church’s renewal. On the contrary, he reaffirms the synodal spirituality of communion, participation and mission.
Francis convened a Synod on Synodality, held in two sessions (October 2023 and October 2024). He approved the final document at the close of the second session. Cardinal Robert Prevost took part in both sessions as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. In this way, God’s providence prepared the one who today carries forward the pastoral renewal of the church in fidelity to the Second Vatican Council.
The trip’s program includes a meeting in Pucallpa between the pope and missionaries and representatives of the Amazonian peoples. What do you hope that meeting will express about the place of Indigenous peoples and the protection of the Amazon in the church’s mission?
Pope Leo wanted to set foot once again on Amazonian soil, this time in the city of Pucallpa on Sunday, Nov. 16. It is an eloquent sign that he is continuing what Pope Francis began. The church in the Amazon senses continuity in the commitment to accompany Indigenous peoples in defending life and caring for their territory, which is threatened by growing deforestation and illegal mining.
He will listen to the anguish and hopes of Indigenous peoples, especially their pain over the violence inflicted on children, adolescents and young people. Consider what happened in Condorcanqui, in northeastern Peru, where Awajún and Wampis girls suffered sexual violence at the hands of their teachers, the very people responsible for educating and protecting them.
His presence will remind us of Pope Francis’ visit to Puerto Maldonado in January 2018, when he said that the Amazon is holy ground, before which we must take off our sandals like Moses. There, Pope Francis also called Indigenous peoples heroic guardians of the Amazon biome.
Pope Leo XIV will reaffirm the church’s commitment to keep accompanying Indigenous peoples in defending life and their dignity as persons, and in caring for the Amazon.
Pope Leo XIV carried out an important part of his mission in Peru as an Augustinian religious. In your view, what mark has this experience, combined with his roots in Illinois, left on his vision and on the exercise of his Petrine ministry?
Pope Leo’s apostolic visit will reaffirm his own missionary experience of 20 years in Peru. He left an indelible mark through his closeness and the strength of spirit with which he built a church that listens, discerns and acts.
We hope his presence among us will give fresh impetus to the evangelization of our peoples: an evangelization that includes a social ministry that accompanies those who suffer, listens to the voices of the peoples of the coast, the Andes and the Amazon, and promotes solidarity and community organizing for the common good.
His visit will help us break silences, overcome indifference and return to what is essential, because “With Christ joy is constantly born anew” (“Evangelii Gaudium,” No. 1). That is our faith, which strengthens hope and moves us to practice charity among brothers and sisters. He will remind those with political, economic and social responsibilities that all authority finds its meaning in service to the common good. He will encourage us not to resign ourselves to poverty, inequality, corruption, violence and exclusion. In this way, we will build together a peace that is “unarmed and disarming.”
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