Pope Leo XIV Goes Home to Peru, Meeting Ghosts of His Past

Just a year and a half into his papacy and less than a month after surgeons removed a lobe of his right lung, Pope Leo XIV, the first pontiff born in the United States, touched down in his homeland on Wednesday.

Yet instead of setting foot on American soil, he arrived in Peru, where he spent two decades as a missionary, priest and bishop and became a citizen in 2015.

“Today I understand how much of this land remains with me and how much of my own story also belongs to you,” Leo said, speaking on Wednesday evening to Peru’s president, civic leaders and diplomats at the Gran Teatro Nacional, a theater and concert hall in the country’s capital, Lima. One of his biggest applause lines was when he referred to Peru as “my homeland.”

Having turned out record crowds at Masses in Argentina, the pope flew from Buenos Aires to Lima on Wednesday afternoon, reaching the final country of his 12-day tour of South America. The pope emerged at the top of the stairs next to a sign on the side of his plane that read “Pontifex Maximus,” and was greeted by Peru’s president, Keiko Fujimori, and a chorus of singing children on a red carpet at the Callao Air Base near Lima.

As his motorcade made its way through city streets under gray skies, about 3 million people lined the roads, according to local authorities, holding up cellphones as they waited for a glimpse of the pontiff.

His choice to visit Peru so soon after becoming pope — while deferring a visit to the country of his birth — underscored the deep emotional ties he feels to the place that formed him as a priest.

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