By Joshua McElwee, Cassandra Garrison and Marco Aquino
ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT, Argentina, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Pope Leo departed on Wednesday for Peru and an emotional homecoming after wrapping up a visit to Argentina that drew a record six million people over three days.
Leo, on a three-nation 12-day South America tour, ended his Argentina visit with an outdoor Mass at the shrine of Our Lady of Lujan, Argentina's most important Catholic devotional site, where throngs of pilgrims had gathered for days
in advance for a chance to see him.
The Mass drew a two million-strong crowd that stretched for miles outside the shrine, located about an hour west of Buenos Aires. People pressed against security barriers, chanting "Leo, Leo, Leo" and waved white-and-yellow Vatican flags as he arrived in an open-air popemobile.
Some in the crowd had walked as far as 10 km (6 miles) to arrive, with many streets closed as a security measure.
In his sermon, Leo asked God to protect Argentina and urged Argentines to have a place for everyone in their society, "especially those who are most in need: the poor and the hungry, migrants, the sick and prisoners."
The pope on Wednesday also visited one of Argentina's largest penitentiaries, where he hugged several inmates and urged guards to treat detainees humanely. During his three-day visit to Argentina, Leo has urged consideration for the disadvantaged at a time when President Javier Milei's austerity agenda has been criticized by the Church for affecting the poor.
Milei's eyes welled with tears as he bid farewell to Leo on the tarmac, a surprising display of emotion from a president known for piling insults on Leo's predecessor, Francis, an Argentine who never returned home after becoming pope.
Crowds for Leo's visit to Argentina have been big. A Mass in Buenos Aires on Monday was the largest single event yet of his 18-month papacy, drawing 2.5 million people.
Leo began the South American trip - the most intense overseas tour by a pope in decades - less than a month after lung cancer surgery and has appeared in good form, giving long speeches in a firm, clear voice.
PERSONAL VISIT
Pope Leo, who has US and Peruvian citizenship, will next embark on a more personal leg of the trip, returning to the place he served as a missionary for about 20 years before becoming pope last year.
The visit is expected to include emotional scenes as the pope sees old friends and spends three days in the northern city of Chiclayo, where he was bishop from 2015 to 2023.
Leo is due to land at Peru's Callao Air Base at 5:30 p.m. (2230 GMT). After a brief welcome ceremony, he will head to the presidential palace to address President Keiko Fujimori, who took over the presidency this year after an election marred by fraud accusations and vote-counting delays.
The visit will test how directly Leo is willing to wade into the politics of his adopted nation.
Fujimori is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was in office from 1990 to 2000 and died in 2024. Her victory marked the return of one of Peru's most influential and polarizing political dynasties. Her father spent many years in jail after leaving the presidency, convicted of human rights abuses.
Fujimori was pardoned in 2017, a decision that Leo, then known as Bishop Robert Prevost, criticized, saying that the former president should personally seek forgiveness from victims if Peru was to achieve genuine reconciliation.
Keiko Fujimori leaned heavily on her father's political legacy during her presidential campaign.
Peru has prepared for the homecoming with fervor: a 14-meter (46-foot) statue depicting Leo with outstretched arms towers over a seaside park in Callao, merchants in Lima are selling pope-themed shirts and souvenirs, and inmates at the country's largest women's prison have stitched velvet dolls bearing his likeness.
Martin Cassinelli, an analyst at the Atlantic Council, said Leo's Peruvian roots give him an unusual ability to speak about the country's political past.
"There's no other country where the pope is as attuned to the domestic politics," Cassinelli said. "If there's anything that could potentially be at odds with the current Fujimori government, it would be a reflection on the past."
Relations between the late Fujimori's government and sectors of the Catholic Church were frequently tense, particularly over human rights during the state's fight against the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. Church figures also opposed the 1995 amnesty for members of the security forces accused of rights abuses.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee on the papal plane and Cassandra Garrison and Marco Aquino in Lima; additional reporting by Leila Miller in Buenos Aires and Lucinda Elliott in Montevideo; editing by Nick Zieminski and Rosalba O'Brien)
