Pope Leo wraps Argentina leg, heads to Peru for a homecoming

Pope Leo closes out the Argentina stretch of his 12-day South America swing on Wednesday, celebrating an outdoor mass at the shrine of Our Lady of Lujan, the country's most important Catholic devotional site. Pilgrims have been streaming into the shrine for days. Later he'll tour one of Argentina's largest penitentiaries, a stop that fits his emphasis on marginalized groups.

The Argentina leg has put the Church's criticism of President Javier Milei's cuts to social programs front and center, according to France 24 and Reuters. Then Leo boards a plane for Peru, and this part gets personal. He holds US and Peruvian citizenship and spent roughly 20 years there as a missionary before becoming pope last year.

Leo lands at Callao Air Base at 5:30 p.m. local time (2230 GMT), then heads straight to the presidential palace for an address to President Keiko Fujimori, elected this year in one of Peru's closest races, one dogged by fraud accusations and slow vote counting. She's the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, who governed from 1990 to 2000 and died in 2024. In 2017, Leo -- then Bishop Robert Prevost -- criticized the pardon granted to the elder Fujimori, saying the convicted former president should seek forgiveness from victims himself for Peru to genuinely reconcile.

He'll spend three days in Chiclayo, the northern city where he served as bishop from 2015 to 2023 and where old friends await. "It's not just a pastoral visit by the pope to his flock, but a visit to his home," said Jose Luis Guadalupe Pérez of Peru's Pacific University, adding that Leo's deep familiarity with the country means "he is bound to step on some toes."

Peru isn't exactly playing it cool. A 14-meter (46-foot) statue of Leo with arms outstretched looms over a seaside park in Callao, Lima merchants are moving pope-themed shirts and souvenirs, and inmates at the country's largest women's prison have stitched velvet dolls in his likeness.

Martin Cassinelli of the Atlantic Council said no other country has a pope this tuned in to its domestic politics. "If there's anything that could potentially be at odds with the current Fujimori government, it would be a reflection on the past," he said. Ties between the late Fujimori's government and parts of the Church ran tense, especially over human rights during the fight against the Maoist Shining Path insurgency, and Church figures opposed the 1995 amnesty for security force members accused of abuses. The Peru stop caps Leo's first South American tour as pope, a trip through three nations ending November 17.