By Joshua McElwee, Cassandra Garrison and Marco Aquino
CALLAO, Peru, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Pope Leo arrived in Peru on Wednesday, an emotional homecoming for the first Peruvian citizen to lead the Catholic Church, after wrapping up a visit to Argentina that drew a record six million people over three days.
Leo was all smiles as he emerged from the plane in the port city of Callao to children holding flowers and singing.
Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori greeted Leo on the tarmac, as people pressed against iron fencing around the runway, squeezing their arms through as they took pictures with cellphones. Some children wore shirts saying: “The Pope returns home.”
Peru is the final and most personal stop on Leo’s three-nation, 12-day trip. Leo, who was born in Chicago and has dual US and Peruvian citizenship, is returning to the place he served as a missionary for about 20 years before becoming pope last year.
The visit is expected to include poignant scenes as the pope sees old friends and spends three days in the northern city of Chiclayo, where he was bishop from 2015 to 2023.
Peru has prepared for the homecoming with fervor: a 14-meter (46-foot) statue depicting Leo with outstretched arms towers over a seaside park in Callao, while merchants in Lima are selling pope-themed shirts and souvenirs and inmates at the country’s largest women’s prison have stitched velvet dolls bearing his likeness.
In Lima, the main plaza erupted into loud cheers as a big screen showed Leo’s plane touch down. The plaza was filled with people waving flags and wearing pope-themed shirts.
Camila Cerazo, 27, arrived with her toddler, husband and relatives, saying she hoped her son might someday remember the excitement surrounding Leo’s arrival.
“Since people found out the pope had Peruvian nationality, they identified with him much more,” she said. “Surely it will be a very warm welcome.”
From the airport, Leo is set to head to the presidential palace in Lima to address Fujimori, who took over the presidency this year after an election marred by fraud accusations and vote-counting delays.
FAMILIAR TERRITORY
The visit will test how directly Leo is willing to wade into the politics of his adopted nation.
Fujimori’s victory marked the return of one of Peru’s most influential and polarizing political dynasties. She is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was in office from 1990 to 2000 and spent many years in jail after leaving the presidency, convicted of human rights abuses. He died in 2024.
Alberto Fujimori was pardoned in 2017, a decision that Leo, then Bishop Robert Prevost, criticized, saying that the former president should personally seek forgiveness from victims if Peru was to achieve genuine reconciliation.
Keiko Fujimori leaned heavily on her father’s political legacy during her presidential campaign, pledging uncompromising security measures to deal with rising crime.
Martin Cassinelli, an analyst at the Atlantic Council, said Leo’s Peruvian roots give him an unusual ability to speak about the country’s political past.
“There’s no other country where the pope is as attuned to the domestic politics,” Cassinelli said. “If there’s anything that could potentially be at odds with the current Fujimori government, it would be a reflection on the past.”
Relations between the late Fujimori’s government and sectors of the Catholic Church were frequently tense, particularly over human rights during the state’s fight against the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. Church figures also opposed the 1995 amnesty for members of the security forces accused of rights abuses.
A RECORD-SETTING TOUR
Earlier on Wednesday, Leo ended his Argentina visit with his third straight day drawing crowds of at least a million people.
At an outdoor Mass, a two million-strong crowd stretched for miles outside the shrine of Our Lady of Lujan, Argentina’s most important Catholic devotional site.
The pope on Wednesday also visited one of Argentina’s largest penitentiaries, where he hugged several inmates and urged guards to treat detainees humanely. During his three-day visit to Argentina, Leo urged consideration for the disadvantaged at a time when President Javier Milei’s austerity agenda has been criticized by the Church for affecting the poor.
Milei’s eyes welled with tears as he bid farewell to Leo on the tarmac, a surprising display of emotion from a president known for piling insults on Leo’s Argentine predecessor, Francis.
A Mass in Buenos Aires on Monday was the largest single event yet of his 18-month papacy, drawing 2.5 million people. He kicked off his South American tour in Uruguay last week.
Leo began the trip — the most intense overseas tour by a pope in decades — less than a month after lung cancer surgery and has appeared in good form, giving long speeches in a firm, clear voice.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee in Callao and Cassandra Garrison and Marco Aquino in Lima; additional reporting by Leila Miller in Buenos Aires and Lucinda Elliott in Montevideo; editing by Nick Zieminski and Rosalba O’Brien)
