Pope Leo XIV is embarking on the longest and farthest trip of his pontificate three weeks after lung cancer surgery VATICAN CITY -- Three weeks after lung cancer surgery, Pope Leo XIV is embarking on the longest and farthest trip of his pontificate: a 12-day, three-nation tour of Latin America that carries more personal and historic weight than any of his voyages to date. The U.S.-born Leo is returning home 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 is so attached to Peru’s people he gave them a shoutout in Spanish from the balcony of St.
Peter’s Basilica on the night of his election. Leo is also going to Argentina, the home of his predecessor, Pope Francis, to whom Leo owes his pontificate. It will be a homecoming of sorts there, too, since Francis never returned to Argentina after his 2013 election, leaving a complicated legacy that Leo will now have to navigate.
Leo starts his trip Friday in Uruguay, the least Catholic, most secular country in all of Latin America, where not even the big Catholic feast days get their due: Christmas in Uruguay is officially “Family Day” and Holy Week is “Tourism Week.” Leo is nevertheless expected to draw huge crowds throughout his trip and will likely raise issues of concern to his still-young pontificate: economic injustice, the plight of Indigenous peoples and the Amazon, and the church’s dreadful legacy of clergy sexual abuse. But many eyes will be on Leo himself for having confirmed this grueling trip at all so soon after surgery Oct. 13 to remove a cancerous tumor from his lung. When doctors announced that Leo required no further treatment, they also said there was no reason why he couldn't make the Nov. 6-17 trip.
It includes a dozen flights and two helicopter rides covering 31,000 kilometers (19,000 miles), the longest of Leo’s pontificate. While popes always travel with ample medical care, the Vatican said no special or additional provisions are planned for Leo, including when the 71-year-old travels to Cusco, Peru, at an altitude of 3,400 meters (11,200 feet). He personally confirmed this trip with no changes,” said Maria Montserrat Alvarado, the Vatican’s new communications chief.
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 and how the church encounters its flock. Alvarado predicted that Leo will speak off-the-cuff in Spanish throughout the visit and will show his true feelings much in the same way he did in June during his visit to Spain, where the world saw a much more relaxed and happy Leo than the reserved, quiet one often on display in Rome. Francis befuddled friends and foes alike for the duration of his 13-year pontificate, because he never returned home.
He had plenty of opportunities, including during his first trip as pope to Rio de Janeiro, and subsequent trips to the region, including to neighboring Chile and Bolivia. 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,” much in the same way Leo has undertaken trips to Spain and France — two once staunchly Christian European countries that Francis stubbornly refused to visit, preferring instead more far-flung “peripheral” places. María Marcela Mazzini, an Argentine theologian who participated in Francis’ 2015 big meeting on the family, attributed Francis’ reluctance to return to Argentina’s complicated political polarization during his pontificate.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
