Pope Leo XIV Back in Peru, Blasts Machismo and Femicides

Leo bounded up a steep flight of stairs Thursday morning in Peru with no apparent trouble, joking to the bishops that some doubting Thomases had bet against him making the trip at all after his lung cancer surgery. Speaking to crowds in the plaza, he denounced Peru's entrenched culture of machismo and said it clashes with Christian teaching that men and women hold equal dignity.

He singled out the women hit hardest. Poor, Indigenous and Afro-Peruvian women are doubly penalized, he said, and called for all women to be valued, protected and respected. His words landed on hard numbers: Peru recorded 1,261 femicide victims between 2016 and 2024, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, a rise of 44 percent over that stretch.

Nicole Cruz, standing in the Plaza Mayor for the speech, said progress on women's suffrage and being heard hasn't stopped the killings from climbing, or at least from drawing more attention. She hopes the pope's message unites women and helps men understand they aren't complaining, but want help, love and to be heard.

Leo spent two decades as a missionary priest and bishop in Peru and credits the country with teaching him how to be a shepherd. He called clergy sexual abuse a reality that has caused immense pain, telling bishops to meet victims with truth and justice. Then he practiced what he preached, sitting with six victims for an hour to hear their stories and discuss healing and safer environments, the Vatican said.

Among the six were former members of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, the once-powerful Peru-based movement Leo knew well from his time as Chiclayo bishop, when he was the Peruvian bishops' point-person for welcoming its victims. Former members first complained to Lima's archdiocese in 2011 about founder Luis Figari, but nothing concrete happened until victims Pedro Salinas and journalist Paola Ugaz published a book in 2015. Investigators later uncovered sadistic, sect-like abuses of power and spirituality plus financial abuses, and Francis suppressed the movement shortly before his death in 2025, though it still holds economic sway in Peru.

Not everyone is satisfied. José Escardó, the movement's first whistleblower, who wrote about his abuse in 2000, said the church's rhetoric has been empty on punishing criminal clergymen, and complained outside the pope's residence that Leo hasn't answered victims' letters for over a year. He called the abuses crimes that must be punished, not sins or mistakes. BishopAccountability has identified 77 priests, brothers, seminarians and laypeople consecrated in Peru publicly accused of sexually abusing minors, a figure the group calls a small fraction of the total in a country where victims have yet to come forward.