Just before April’s general elections in Peru, social media posts highlighted the presence of a prominent figure on the country’s voter list: Pope Leo XIV. The pontiff, listed as Robert Prevost, did not cast a ballot in the election, despite mandatory voting laws. Peruvian media reported that Pope Leo, a Peruvian citizen, would not be sanctioned since voters over age 65 are exempt.
But the fascination with Leo as a potential voter reflected his stature in Peru, where the U.S.-born pontiff served as an Augustinian missionary in the 1980s and 1990s and returned as bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo for eight years in 2015. Peruvians rejoiced after his election on May 8, 2025, especially as he quickly expressed his affection for his former diocese in his first address to the public as pope that day.
Many Peruvians remembered with gratitude his response to several catastrophic floods in his mostly rural diocese. Photos spread on social media showing Leo, then Bishop Prevost, wading into murky waters in gumboots to oversee relief efforts.
They also recall him procuring oxygen tanks during the Covid-19 pandemic—an especially disastrous experience in Peru—while public officials were indolent. The pope had also responded decisively to the exodus of migrants fleeing Venezuela for other parts of South America, establishing shelters and soup kitchens for the Venezuelans as they moved through Peru and urging church ministries to support these migrant families.
The pope continues to show his affection for his adopted country. “Probably Peru,” he replied when a reporter from Crux, the Catholic news site, asked whether he would support Peru or the United States in the World Cup.
The pope remains important to Peruvians as a spiritual leader but also as a favorite son who embraced the South American country as a missionary, prelate and citizen, César Piscoya said. He served as executive secretary of the social vicariate under Leo in the Diocese of Chiclayo.
Mr. Piscoya told America that to Peruvians and especially the people of Chiclayo, the pope “embodies the very essence of a person, a man, a religious figure…whether we labeled him as powerful, wealthy or even belonging to a certain lineage or upper class, [who] is, in reality, simple, calm, composed, kind, approachable and concerned for us.”
The pope’s calm presence, he recalled, created an emotional connection “from the very beginning.”
The campesinos and people that the future pope met in Peru “ended up recognizing him as a brother,” he added. “They ended up recognizing him as a friend; they ended up recognizing him as one of their own.” That kinship is not one easily achieved, he said, among people who have learned to treat figures from North America or Europe with some distance and distrust.
The pope’s calls for peace after the U.S. air campaign against Iran drew blistering attacks from President Donald Trump and an admonishment from Vice President JD Vance that the pope should stick to moral matters and the management of the Catholic Church. But it also won him admiration in Peru from all political corners.
“There has been a general feeling of support for the pope [even from Peru’s] most anti-religious sectors or those considered more atheist,” José Luis Gordillo, S.J., the executive director of Jesuit Refugee Service in Peru, said. “They find that the defense of the culture of peace and disarmament in general is not just…a religious issue but a moral issue, a matter of reason, a matter of common sense.”
The fondness of everyday Peruvians for Pope Leo contrasts sharply with widespread scorn for the country’s political class and coincides with the country’s deep political divisions. Dina Boluwarte, the president at the time of Leo’s election, plumbed an approval rating of just 2 percent.
Ms. Boluwarte was ousted in October by Peru’s Congress, a body that itself maintains a public approval rating low enough to rival Ms. Boluwarte’s. Incredibly, two additional presidents have served since her ouster.
Peru has had eight presidents over the past 10 years, and several former presidents have ended up in prison after their terms. Analysts attribute the revolving-door presidency to a powerful Congress more than willing to impeach Peru’s top leaders.
“Unpopular presidents can be removed relatively easily, which creates incentives for an equally unpopular Congress to appear to punish improper behavior by presidents and attempt to shore up its popularity with voters,” Nicolás Saldías, a senior Latin America analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said. “Congress can also use the threat of ouster to negotiate with the president to pass its preferred policies.”
Peru had a unicameral Congress until recently, further facilitating presidential removals, but a recent reform added a Senate, which should restore some stability, he said.
The first anniversary of Leo’s election coincides with a new electoral controversy in Peru. The election on April 12 unfolded amid accusations of irregularities as some polling stations failed to open. A record 35 presidential candidates contested the election. The top vote-getter was the conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori—the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, a regional strongman whose 1990s iron-fisted regime accompanied Leo’s missionary service in Trujillo. Ms. Fujimori emerged with 17 percent of the vote and will advance to the runoff election for the fourth time. Ms. Fujimori ran on a law-and-order agenda, promising to deploy the military to restore order. She also promises to implement a “deregulatory shock” on the Peruvian economy.
The second- and third-place candidates represent Peru’s far left and far right and have been neck-and-neck, with approximately 12 percent support each in the vote counting that continues almost a month after the election. The top two candidates advance to a runoff election on June 7.
Far-left candidate Roberto Sánchez currently sits in second place, so he will most likely be pitted against Ms. Fujimori. He draws support from Peru’s rural communities and Indigenous Andean regions, where voters vaulted schoolteacher and union leader Pedro Castillo to the presidency in 2021. (Mr. Castillo was removed in 2022 and imprisoned after trying to dissolve Congress before it could oust him.) Mr. Sánchez, who served in Mr. Castillo’s cabinet, promises to convene a constitutional convention and sharply increase public spending.
Far-right candidate Rafael López Aliaga is an Opus Dei supernumerary and former mayor of Lima, the capital. He currently trails Mr. Sánchez by 27,500 votes, out of more than 16 million valid votes, apparently just missing out on the runoff. He has alleged fraud in Peru’s slow vote counting, pointing to the late opening of polls and to “boxes of ballots” found in a dumpster. Known as “Porky” and famed for a combative style and colorful language, the populist López Aliaga has aligned himself with Mr. Trump and promises to allow U.S. soldiers into the country to help fight criminal gangs and to use the national army to restore public security.
Local political analysts say Pope Leo has played no active role in Peru’s elections. Instead, the polarization in Peru somewhat resembles what has been happening in Argentina, where politicians on all sides tried to claim native son Pope Francis.
Pope Francis never visited his home country after his 2013 election for reasons he never articulated. But many believe he was unwilling to be used by Argentinian politicians. Argentinian political commentators point to the nation’s deep political and societal divisions as one reason he was reluctant to return—divisions so deep that politicians from opposing parties did not greet each other or sit in the same pew at a Mass celebrated on April 21 in Buenos Aires on the anniversary of Pope Francis’ passing.
Peruvians expect Leo to visit this year regardless of the election outcome. Bishop Carlos García Camader of Lurin, the president of the Peruvian bishops’ conference, told reporters in February there was an 80 percent chance of a papal visit to Peru in late 2026. He said a committee to manage the visit would likely be formed, according to OSV News.
A Catholic source in Argentina said such committees have already been formed in Argentina and also in Uruguay.
“He’s aware of what’s happening in Peru, and he knows almost all the political players,” Patrick Espinal, a youth organizer in the Diocese of Chiclayo and member of Peru’s National Catholic Students Union, said. “I personally believe he’d like to come, regardless of who’s in power.”
Any trip to Peru would likely include Chiclayo. Municipal authorities there have been preparing for a papal visit by fixing long-neglected infrastructure and renovating the local cathedral, according to Mr. Espinal.
Observers say Leo’s governance of the diocese on Peru’s northern coast reflected many of his priorities at the Vatican.
“He provides space for the laity, for women, too, and for popular piety,” Veronique Lecaros, the director of the theology department at Peru’s Pontifical Catholic University, said. “The church has a lot of credibility. So I think that when he comes to Peru, his voice will be very strong, very prophetic. What he says will carry weight.”
Leo’s experience in Peru also prepared him for dealing with difficult figures. He encountered a high degree of resistance in Chiclayo, “perhaps more than in the Vatican,” Ms. Lecaros said, explaining that Opus Dei bishops had led the diocese for more than 50 years before Leo’s appointment.
As Chiclayo’s bishop, he investigated the controversial and influential Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, which Pope Francis ordered extinguished in 2025 following accusations of abuse and corruption. He was also targeted by conservative groups, which took up the claims of three sisters alleging he covered up clerical abuse in his diocese.
One of the victims, Ana María Quispe Díaz, later told National Catholic Reporter that her lawyer in promoting that account likely had a hidden agenda. She said she had been initially pleased with the then-Bishop Prevost’s response to her experience.
As a missionary in Chulucanas, near the border with Ecuador, Leo also lived through the Maoist insurgency known as the Shining Path in the 1980s. He later served in the city of Trujillo during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori, who crushed the Shining Path but was convicted of human rights abuses. Pope Leo was not silent in the face of these abuses, according to observers.
“He will not be afraid,” Mr. Piscoya said. “He will not be afraid of the Trump administration today, just as he was not afraid of the government of Alberto Fujimori and just as he was not afraid of the municipal or regional governments in Chiclayo.”
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