Pope Leo travelled on Saturday, November 14, to Peru's western Andean mountains on a special stop on his 12-day South America tour to visit Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, a remote town of fewer than 6,000 inhabitants who once knew him as the bishop of Chiclayo, a city a four-hour drive away, Reuters reported. Leo made the journey many times as Chiclayo's bishop from 2015 to 2023, travelling 100 kilometres (62 miles) east from the Pacific coast; this time, instead of the winding mountain roads, he arrived by helicopter.

Source: Reuters

"Pope Leo, welcome home," a local band sang as crowds gathered in a field for a Mass with Leo, Reuters reported, adding that buildings across the town centre were painted with murals depicting the pope when he was a bishop in Peru. Leo later celebrated Mass on a field near the parish, before a crowd the Vatican estimated at 20,000 people. Speaking at the local parish shortly after arriving, Leo said he felt "great joy" at being able to visit the small town again, Reuters reported.

Source: Reuters

AFP reported that Leo warned on Saturday that the heartland of the ancient Inca Empire was suffering, speaking of villages emptying, at an open-air Mass in the town. AFP said the 71-year-old pope flew by helicopter to the isolated town, which sits at an altitude of over 2,000 metres (6,560 feet), an area he visited on horseback when he lived in Peru as priest Robert Francis Prevost, and that he was determined to make the visit despite undergoing cancer surgery just one month ago.

Source: AFP via Ekkow

One of Peru's poorest regions

Cajamarca, the Peruvian department including Santa Cruz, is one of the poorest regions of the country, where up to 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to the state statistics office, Reuters reported; AFP put the figure at over 40 percent, the highest in the country, according to official data. Among those at the Mass was Rev. Kevin Noriega, a local priest ordained by the future pope, then known as Bishop Robert Prevost, in 2018, Reuters reported.

Jorge Villegas, vicar general of the Diocese of Chiclayo and a member of the organising committee for the pope's trip to Peru, told AFP that Leo had originally wanted to add a second stop in an even more remote location, Incahuasi, a place much higher up where the population still speaks Quechua, an Indigenous language of Peru. Later on Saturday, Leo visited a Catholic shrine in Zana, where he lamented the history of African enslavement during Spanish colonial control of the country, Reuters reported.

A homecoming, and what comes next

Leo, originally from Chicago, lived for about 20 years in Peru as a missionary and holds US and Peruvian citizenship, Reuters reported. He is visiting Peru, as the first Peruvian citizen to become pope, on the last and most personal leg of a three-nation tour that has drawn record crowds of some 12 million people. On Sunday, his penultimate day in Peru, he will travel to Cusco, the former Inca capital, and Pucallpa, a gateway to the Amazonian jungle, before leaving for Rome on Monday, Reuters reported.