Pope Leo returns to what is expected to be a national party in his second homeland of Peru

LIMA, Peru — Pope Leo XIV headed to his second homeland on Wednesday, returning to the place that he credits with teaching him how to be a pastor and where a nationwide party awaits to welcome their beloved “Padre Robert” home.

Pope Leo returns to what is expected to be a national party in his second homeland of PeruThe visit to Peru marks the final leg of Leo’s three-nation South America tour and its emotional highlight, given the more than two decades that the former Robert Prevost spent in Peru as a missionary priest and later bishop.

As a dual citizen of the United States and Peru, he’s the first pope from each country. “My heart is so excited that it makes me want to cry with joy,” said Zuly Castillo, who served as Leo’s secretary when he was bishop of the northern city of Chiclayo near the Pacific Coast.

Across from her office, a life-size cardboard cutout of the pope now welcomes visitors to his former residence. “Peru is the crown of the trip, the homecoming of the first Peruvian pope, no matter where he was born,” said Gustavo Morello, an associate professor of sociology at Boston College and the author of “Lived Religion in Latin America.” “This is a return to his origins without any doubt,” Morello said.

In preparation for the pope’s visit, a huge 46-foot statue of the pontiff was unveiled in the port of El Callao. Baristas in Lima, the capital, were offering cappuccinos decorated with the image of the pope. Popemania also hit Chiclayo.

Leo is painted in colorful murals, emblazoned on T-shirts, baseball hats, and even bobblehead dolls and ice creams. Leo will celebrate Mass in all his old stomping grounds including at the nearby sanctuary of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo in Zaña, a city that is a hub of Afro-Peruvian culture, and where the pope often visited to pray to the saint of his devotion.

Since Leo knows his adopted country so well, his speeches will be closely watched, especially one he’ll deliver from the square in front of Lima’s cathedral “on the challenges and hopes for the future of the Peruvian people.” Peru, a nation of 34 million people, is overwhelmed by challenges, among them the looming arrival of nature’s chaotic climatic agent of El Niño, violent crime and income inequality.

In 2025, 25.7% of the Peruvian population was living in monetary poverty. “A small elite has GDP levels comparable to some U.S. states,” Morello said, adding that while the macroeconomy “is doing well, most Peruvians live in structural poverty and economic insecurity.” “This could help build stability in the political system.

Without any doubt, Peru is better now than 30 years ago, when Shining Path was still a threat,” he said about the rebel movement that terrorized Peru in the 1980s and 1990s when Leo was a young Augustinian missionary. “His return, now as pope, inspires great hope among a large segment of Peruvian society that still perceives and feels the abandonment of the state,” said Rolando Pérez, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

“Deeply etched in the public consciousness is the image of a shepherd who stood by the people, helping to bring into the public agenda their demands and their cry for justice,” he said. The pope will honor Peru’s Indigenous peoples by traveling to Pucallpa, in Peru’s Amazon, to celebrate Mass.

Illegal gold mining and the cultivation of coca leaves, the raw material used to produce cocaine, are affecting Peru’s Indigenous peoples. “The Amazon is a place where critical issues affecting development such as the environmental crisis, the exclusion of Indigenous peoples, various forms of violence, and extreme poverty all intersect,” said Pérez.

Leo will also meet with popular groups of faithful and representatives of local traditions in Cusco — the capital of the Inca empire, an important city of Spanish colonial rule and an important cultural destination, including the nearby ruins at Machu Picchu.

The pope will celebrate Mass in Cusco’s main square, where in 1781 the Indigenous hero Túpac Amaru II was killed following the most significant rebellion against the Spanish during the colonial era.