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Chiclayo Awaits Its Bishop: Pope Leo XIV Heads Friday to the Peruvian Diocese He Shepherded for Eight Years
After a record welcome in Lima, the first American pope returns to the northern city that still calls him its own, with an open-air Mass expected to draw about a million people.
Filed November 12, 2026 · 📍 Chicago, IL 60602
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Part of our continuing coverage: Pope Leo XIV Comes Home to Peru, Calling the Nation Where He Served for Decades His 'Homeland'
Key points
- Pope Leo XIV flies to Chiclayo Friday for a Mass at the Pampas de Pimentel, where about 1 million are expected.
- He served as bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023 after two decades in Peru as a missionary.
- A Vatican statement put Lima's welcome crowd at about 3 million, a record for his papacy.
- The six-day visit also takes him to Cusco and the Amazon city of Pucallpa before he returns to Rome.
For eight years he was simply the bishop. On Friday, the people of Chiclayo will welcome him back as the Vicar of Christ. Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to fly from Lima to the northern Peruvian city he led as bishop from 2015 to 2023, in what the Associated Press calls the emotional highlight of his South American journey [1][4].
"The pope is Chiclayano!" one local priest, the Rev. Jasson Sempertegui, told the AP [1].
A Record Welcome in Lima
The Holy Father arrived in Peru on Wednesday, the last leg of a 12-day trip that began in Uruguay and continued through Argentina [3][4]. A Vatican statement said about three million people greeted him in Lima, a record for his papacy, Al Jazeera reported [3]. Crowds in the capital's main plaza cheered as a big screen showed his plane landing, and some held signs reading "Welcome home" [3].
After meeting privately with President Keiko Fujimori, the Pope addressed national leaders at the Gran Teatro Nacional [2]. He spoke warmly of the decades he spent sharing the lives of Peruvians, listening to their worries and learning from their faith, and told them how much of his own story belongs to them [2]. He urged leaders to listen to citizens and to cultivate honesty and integrity, which he called essential to trust in democratic institutions, and he said that for families, peace means being able to go out to work without fear [2][3].
He also spoke gently about the healing Peru still needs after decades of left-wing terrorism and the government campaign against it, inviting the country to confront the wounds of the past [2][3]. Al Jazeera noted that he arrived only weeks after surgery for lung cancer [3].
The Shepherd Comes Home
Chiclayo, a city of about 700,000 where one in five residents lives in poverty, remembers its bishop as a hands-on pastor [1]. According to the AP, he led the purchase of oxygen plants during the COVID-19 pandemic, waded through mud after torrential rains to reach the needy, and drove his pickup truck to remote villages to hand out blankets [1]. He celebrated Mass at the local prison, where inmates later carved him a pastoral staff, shared meals at a soup kitchen now named for him, and oversaw a shelter and homes for Venezuelan migrants [1].
When he stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter's in May 2025, his first words in Spanish went to his "beloved Diocese of Chiclayo" [1]. He liked to joke that Chicago and Chiclayo differ by only a letter [1].
His Peruvian story began long before. Then-Father Robert Prevost, an Augustinian, first came to Peru in the 1980s and spent about two decades there as a missionary, teacher and bishop [1][3].
What Happens Next
The Vatican's program has the Pope landing in Chiclayo Friday morning and celebrating an open-air Mass at the Pampas de Pimentel at 10:30 a.m. local time [4]. Peru's state news agency reported that about a million people are expected [5]. Later Friday he is to pray privately at a chapel dedicated to St. Óscar Romero, meet clergy at the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and speak to students at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University [4].
On Saturday he is scheduled to crown a statue of the Immaculate Virgin at Chiclayo's cathedral, celebrate Mass in the Andean town of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, and close the Jubilee Year of St. Toribio de Mogrovejo at the saint's shrine [4][5]. Sunday brings Cusco, where he will lead the Angelus, and the Amazon city of Pucallpa, where he will meet missionaries and Amazonian peoples and celebrate Mass [4]. He returns to Rome on Nov. 17 after visiting a home for the elderly poor and offering a final Mass in Lima [4].
For Catholics everywhere, the trip is a reminder of a simple truth about this pontificate: the man in the white cassock learned to be a shepherd among the poor of northern Peru. This week, the flock he left behind gets to welcome him home.
Sources
Pope Leo XIV drew more than a million people in Argentina. Would you travel to see the pope?
- Absolutely
- Maybe, if he came to the U.S.
- No, but I'd watch on TV
- No
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Pope Leo XIV Comes Home to Peru, Calling the Nation Where He Served for Decades His 'Homeland'
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