ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV will retrace his steps as a missionary priest when he returns home to Peru in November in his longest trip to date that will also take him to Uruguay and Argentina, where his Argentine predecessor Pope Francis never returned.
The Vatican on Monday published the detailed itinerary for Leo’s first visit to Latin America as pope. The Nov. 6-17 trip will be a homecoming for the U.S.-born pontiff who also has Peruvian citizenship
and spent two decades there as a priest and bishop.
As he showed during his four-nation Africa trip in April, the 71-year-old Leo has no qualms about covering vast distances and working late into the night when he’s on the road. In all, he’ll clock just over 31,000 kilometers (19,000 miles) of flight time during the trip, nearly double the 17,000 kms (10,000 miles) he traveled in Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea.
The visit begins in Uruguay to put Leo in place to mark an important Catholic feast day Nov. 8, associated with the country’s patron saint, of Our Lady of the Thirty-Three. The small statue of the Madonna dates from the 18th century Jesuit missions in the area and currently is housed in the city of Florida, where Leo will celebrate Mass at the National Shrine.
Leo will also honor Argentina’s patron, Our Lady of Lujan, on the second, Argentine leg of the trip. The statue of the Madonna, located in the city of Lujan in the province of Buenos Aires, was particularly dear to Francis.
Francis, who died in 2025, confounded friends and foes alike by never returning to his native Argentina, after he left for Rome for the 2013 conclave that elected him pope.
He had been a divisive figure back home, both as Jesuit superior and archbishop of Buenos Aires, and apparently wanted to avoid fueling the country’s polemics by not giving the ruling party at any given time the political benefits that come with a pope visit.
But Leo seems keen to finally grant Argentina’s faithful a papal visit for the first time since St. John Paul II came in 1982 and 1987.
In Buenos Aires, Leo will visit the capital’s federal prison, perhaps a nod to Francis’ legacy of prison ministry that he developed first as a “slum priest” in Buenos Aires.
The highlight of Leo’s trip will certainly be his return to Peru and especially his diocese of Chiclayo. The former Robert Prevost was bishop of Chiclayo from 2014-2023, when Francis brought him to the Vatican to head the office for bishops.
On the night of his election, Leo gave a shoutout in Spanish to his “beloved diocese of Chiclayo,” from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica. He praised its faithful for having “walked alongside their bishop, shared their faith, and given so much to continue being a faithful Church of Jesus Christ.”
Leo is spending the bulk of his visit in Peru, arriving in Lima on Nov. 11 and leaving the afternoon of Nov. 16 after a final Mass in Callao, outside Lima, where he served as a temporary administrator. In between, he’ll spend time in Chiclayo, including having a special private dinner with the diocese’s priests.
He’ll meet with popular groups in Cusco, in the Peruvian Andes, to celebrate the city’s rich history. Cusco was the capital of the Inca empire, an important city of Spanish colonial rule and today remains an important cultural destination with ruins including Machu Picchu.
That same day, Nov. 15, he’ll also honor Peru’s Indigenous peoples by traveling to Pucallpa, deep in Peru’s Amazonian forest, to celebrate Mass.
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