By NICOLE WINFIELD, ISABEL DEBRE and FRANKLIN BRICEÑO
ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV will retrace his steps as a missionary priest when he returns 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.
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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 km (10,000 miles) he traveled in Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea.
The visit begins in Uruguay, whose secular identity is so deeply rooted that Christmas is officially Family Day and Holy Week is Tourism Week. His itinerary includes a stop at a parish in Casavalle, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital plagued by drug trafficking and gang violence.
The Uruguay stop will also put Leo in place to mark an important Catholic feast day Nov. 8, associated with the country’s patron saint, Our Lady of the Thirty-Three.
Francis never traveled back to Argentina once he became pope
After Uruguay, Leo arrives in Argentina where government officials said Monday they expect 7 million people to turn out. Francis, who died in 2025, confounded friends and foes alike by never returning to his native land, 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.
In Buenos Aires, Leo will meet libertarian President Javier Milei, who once called Francis “the representative of evil on Earth.” Milei’s sweeping spending cuts have strained relations with Argentine church leaders, who have criticized his government for putting economic orthodoxy ahead of the needs of the poor.
On Nov. 9, Leo will visit the Don Orione care home in Claypole, south of Buenos Aires, a Catholic institution founded in 1935 that houses more than 300 people with disabilities. The stop carries political overtones as cuts to disability funding have become a flashpoint in Milei’s austerity program.
At a press conference Monday, Argentine officials were asked how Milei’s spending cuts squared with the church’s emphasis on social justice. Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno said there were “no fundamental differences” between the government and the Catholic Church, citing Milei’s opposition to abortion and saying he had cut poverty in half.
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Leo will also celebrate his first Mass in Argentina at Buenos Aires’ Monumento de los Españoles, where St. John Paul II led prayers on June 12, 1982, during Argentina’s war with Britain over the Falkland Islands. John Paul, who also came in 1987, was the first and last pope to visit.
Leo returns to his roots in Peru
The highlight of Leo’s trip will certainly be his return to Peru and especially his diocese of Chiclayo, where he’ll celebrate Mass in all his old stomping grounds. 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, and his return trip makes clear he wants to revisit the churches and schools where he developed deep relationships as bishop.
He’ll celebrate Mass at the Pampas de Pimentel, a 300-hectare (740-acre) expanse facing the Pacific Ocean where an estimated 1 million people are expected to gather. He’ll also pray at a much smaller but meaningful chapel dedicated to St. Oscar Romero, beloved among the working class and poor for defending them against repression by El Salvador’s army.
The chapel’s reconstruction was spearheaded during Leo’s time as bishop of Chiclayo, and its complete renovation was later achieved through the efforts of the Rev. Edgar Rimaycuna, the pope’s personal secretary who joined him in Rome and is now ubiquitous by his side.
Leo will meet with popular groups in Cusco, in the Peruvian Andes. 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. He’ll celebrate Mass and pray in Cusco’s main square, where in 1781 the Indigenous hero Túpac Amaru II was quartered following the most significant rebellion against the Spanish during the colonial era.
That same day, Nov. 15, he’ll also honor Peru’s Indigenous peoples by traveling to Pucallpa, in Peru’s Amazon, to celebrate Mass.
DeBre contributed from Buenos Aires; Briceño contributed from Lima, Peru.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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