'The Holy Father Is Coming Home': Pope Leo XIV Leaves Argentina's Record Crowds for an Emotional Return to Peru

Pope Leo XIV said goodbye to Argentina on Wednesday with a Mass for an enormous crowd at the country's most beloved shrine, then boarded a plane for the most personal stop of his pontificate: a return to Peru, the country he has called home for much of his life.

The Holy See Press Office reported that more than 2 million people attended the farewell Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Luján, a town of about 111,000 residents, OSV News reported.

At Luján, the American-born pope urged Argentines to reconcile with one another. "We need to reconcile ourselves with our past and present," he said, according to OSV News. He called for a Church where everyone has room at the table, especially the poor, migrants, the sick and prisoners.

Earlier in the visit, at an interfaith gathering with about 100 religious leaders in Buenos Aires, Leo cited the Second Vatican Council in affirming the spiritual bond that unites the Church with the people of Israel, The Times of Israel reported. Argentine rabbis who attended welcomed the message; one rabbi with the World Jewish Congress noted that such phrasing is uncommon in Church documents. At a time of rising antisemitism around the world, it was a striking word of friendship.

Leo, born Robert Prevost in Chicago, arrived in Peru in 1985 as an Augustinian missionary in Chulucanas, later served in Trujillo and Piura and learned Quechua, America Magazine reported. He became a Peruvian citizen in 2015 when he was named bishop of Chiclayo, and he led that diocese until 2023.

Peruvians are ready. "The Holy Father is coming home," Bishop Edinson Farfán of Chiclayo told Aid to the Church in Need.

According to the Vatican's official program, the pope was scheduled to land at the Callao Air Base near Lima on Wednesday evening for a welcome at the presidential palace, a meeting with Peru's president and an address at the Gran Teatro Nacional. On Thursday, he meets Peru's bishops, prays in Lima's cathedral and joins young people for a vigil at the National Stadium.

On Friday, he travels to Chiclayo, his former diocese, for an outdoor Mass where about 1.5 million people are expected, according to Aid to the Church in Need. The schedule continues with a Marian coronation and Mass at Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, which America Magazine says will be the first papal visit there. He then goes to Cusco and to Pucallpa, where he will celebrate what Aid to the Church in Need describes as the first papal Eucharist in the Peruvian Amazon. The journey ends with a visit to a shelter for abandoned elderly people and a final Mass before he flies back to Rome, arriving on Nov. 17.

The pope returns to a country where the Catholic faith that shaped Peru for centuries is facing real competition. A Pew Research Center survey found that 67% of Peruvians identify as Catholic, down 9 percentage points from a decade earlier, and that 9% of Peruvian adults were raised Catholic but are now Protestant. Many of those who have left the Church have joined Protestant congregations, most of them evangelical.

That shift is a challenge for the Church, but it also reflects something hopeful: Peruvians are still seeking God, many of them with deep devotion. A pope who knows Peru's villages, speaks its languages and has walked its mountain roads may be uniquely suited to speak to those hearts.

There is something deeply moving about a shepherd returning to the flock he once tended. For about two decades, the man the world now calls Pope Leo XIV was simply a missionary priest and later a bishop in the north of Peru, serving the poor far from the spotlight. This week he goes back, not as a stranger, but as one of their own.

For American Catholics, and for all Christians, his journey is a reminder that the Church's strength has always been built one parish, one village and one faithful soul at a time. Millions in Argentina came out to pray with him. In Peru, they are waiting to welcome him home.

What comes next: the pope's six days in Peru run through Nov. 16, with the Chiclayo Mass on Friday the emotional high point, before his return to Rome.