Determined Pope travels to Latin America after surgery

At the end of the October, the Vatican confirmed that Pope Leo XIV's apostolic trip to Latin America would proceed on 6 November, according to a previously published programme.

The confirmation came just 13 days after the pope underwent surgery at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital to remove a malignant tumour from his right lung.

There were concerns about possible health challenges resulting from changing altitudes in Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, but doctors gave him the green light to travel.

Rather than postponing the trip, the Pope was reportedly determined to keep his commitment and return to the continent where he spent two decades as a missionary priest and a bishop.

Robert Prevost first went to Peru as an Augustinian missionary in 1985 where he spent almost half of his priestly life before Pope Francis called him to Rome in 2023 to head the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops.

Latin America is home to around 40% of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, but the Catholic proportion of the region's population has shrunk in recent years.

The first stop of Pope Leo's trip was to the region's most secular nation Uruguay; marking the first papal visit in 38 years.

Although only about a third of Uruguayans identify as Catholic, tickets for papal events sold out rapidly.

In recent years, Uruguay has been an international transit and export hub for cocaine heading to Europe and Africa and has a high suicide rate which the Pope linked to social isolation.

He called for a united response from families, communities, and the healthcare system, encouraging people to keep drawing near, to keep blessing, and to keep sowing.

The apostolic trip then moved to neighbouring Argentina, the homeland of Pope Francis, who never returned there following his election in 2013.

Argentina is the second largest country in Latin America and has a population of 46 million people, 58% of whom profess to be Catholic.

Robert Francis Prevost visited Argentina at least four times between 2001 and 2013 as prior-general of the Augustinians.

An estimated 2.5 million people attended an open-air mass in Buenos Aires this week, including President Javier Milei.

Pilgrims climbed trees, fences, and lampposts to see the pontiff, who wore white-and-sky-blue robes matching the Argentine flag.

In his homily, Pope Leo acknowledged that many Argentine families were living through their own experiences of Calvary, through illness, poverty, unemployment, discrimination and family breakdown.

"We need to reconcile ourselves with our past and present, in order to build a new future where love has the final word," he said.

Before departing for Peru, he thanked Argentina for receiving him "with open arms".

The visit to Peru was an emotional homecoming for Pope Leo to the country he had spent as an Augustinian missionary and Bishop of Chiclayo.

An estimated three million people lined the miles-long motorcade route into Lima, waving Peruvian and Vatican flags, with some breaking past security barriers to chase the popemobile.

In a closed-door meeting with Peruvian bishops in Lima, the Pope addressed the clerical abuse scandals that have rocked the Peruvian Church, particularly involving the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV).

The organisation which had been granted pontifical approval by Pope John Paul II in 1997, was officially suppressed and dissolved by decree in 2025, following accusations of abuse and corruption by the founder and leadership of the group.

The pontiff heard the testimonies of six survivors of abuse by clergy and SCV members.

Engagement with abuse victims part of Leo's papacy

Since his election in May last year, direct engagement with clerical abuse victims has become part of Leo's papacy.

He has met with the global coalition Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), survivors from Belgium, survivors in Lourdes and he met survivors in Buenos Aires just days before arriving in Peru.

The first abuse survivor to hold a private, one-on-one meeting with the Pontiff in February was David Ryan, who featured in RTÉ’s Blackrock Boys documentary.

However, as recently as this week, other victims have said that such meetings exclude hundreds more who are still seeking answers, justice and accountability from the Catholic Church.

The decades spent by Pope Leo as a missionary as well as his Peruvian citizenship led to millions to welcome him this week.

It is his sixth foreign trip, the first after his trip to France in September, the first papal visit to the country in 18 years. Widely seen as a major test of his popularity in a deeply secular Western nation, it defied expectations with significant crowds.

Roughly 300,000 people lined the streets of Paris to see him, 80,000 young people packed the Stade de France, and up to 800,000 filled the Place de la Concorde for an open-air Mass - triple the turnout for Pope Benedict’s visit in 2008.

At UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the Pontiff warned against unchecked artificial intelligence creating a "paradise of machines" and was praised for speaking out against nationalism and war.

Although he has managed to preserve Pope Francis’s focus on migrants, the poor, and the environment; other priorities, like his concerns over the development of AI, have emerged. His first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, called for global ethical guardrails around artificial intelligence so that technology serves human dignity rather than replacing it.

When the Chicago-born cardinal stepped onto the balcony of St Peter’s in May 2025, there were questions about how the world would receive the first North American pope.

He does not require translators or intermediaries to communicate his message, including when he is challenging the White House and US President Donald Trump.

Pope Leo has condemned mass deportations, criticised US intervention in Venezuela, and has fiercely opposed the war in Iran, prompting Mr Trump to attack him on social media as "weak on crime" and "terrible on foreign policy".

His papacy may be in its infancy, yet few can ignore a pontiff who drew hundreds of thousands in France, underwent lung surgery, and embarked on a Latin American tour all within six weeks, punctuated by an occasional jibe at the US administration.