Pope Leo XIV in Uruguay, Argentina and Peru: the dates, the cities and why Peru

The dates and the cities, day by day

This is the programme on the Vatican’s website as it read on November 4. It was first published on September 21. Times are local: three hours behind UTC in Uruguay and Argentina, five hours behind in Peru. The table gives the main public events, not every transfer.

By our count the programme lists nine Masses (EWTN’s September report said ten), twelve plane flights and two helicopter legs. That explains why reports differ: OSV News counts 14 flights and more than 19,000 miles, while the Associated Press says a dozen flights and two helicopter rides.

The Press Office’s August announcement named ten cities; the programme adds Claypole, Pimentel, Callao, Santa Cruz de Succhabamba and Zaña. The 17:30 prayer on November 14 is at the shrine of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo in Zaña, where he died in 1606.

What has changed since the programme came out

His health. The programme came out on September 21. The Pope told the world about a nodule on his lung on October 11; tests after the operation confirmed an early lung cancer. Surgeons removed the lower lobe of his right lung on October 13, and on October 21 his doctors said no further treatment was needed. That story, with the prayers people have offered for him, is on our page a prayer of thanks for Pope Leo’s recovery. On October 23 the Vatican said he would miss a gathering in Assisi on October 27, on his doctors’ advice. On October 26 the Press Office confirmed the journey, and his physician, Dr. Luigi Carbone, said there were “no contraindications” to it. The Associated Press reported the same day that no changes to the programme had been announced. We found none as of November 4.

Reports have noted what the schedule asks of him: days of public events lasting more than 12 hours, and Cusco at more than 11,000 feet (National Catholic Reporter, November 2). Santa Cruz de Succhabamba is above 6,000 feet (OSV News). OSV News also reported on October 26 that Msgr. Guillermo Inca Pereda, who coordinates the Peru visit, said Cusco was not ruled out and that a specialized ambulance would travel with the delegation.

Meetings with abuse victims. They are not on the published programme. On October 27 the Vatican said that “several meetings are planned” with people abused by clergy and members of the Church, without saying where or with whom (Reuters; AFP in the Buenos Aires Times). The announcement came a day after 33 survivors of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, the Peru-based movement that Pope Francis ordered closed in 2025, complained that the schedule left no room for them (InfoVaticana, October 28). At a briefing on November 3 the Press Office director, Matteo Bruni, confirmed again that the Pope will meet victims during the journey, still without saying where (Vatican News).

The Lima youth vigil. Reports of the September programme placed it at the Estadio Monumental. On October 8 Cardinal Carlos Castillo of Lima said it would be at the National Stadium, which he said offered better conditions (EFE in El Peruano), and the Vatican’s page now says National Stadium.

Why Peru gets the most time

Six of the journey’s days are in Peru, and two nights are in Chiclayo, the diocese he named from the balcony of St. Peter’s in his first address as pope (National Catholic Reporter). He was appointed its apostolic administrator in 2014 and served as its bishop from 2015 to 2023 (OSV News). The Chiclayo programme is a return to his old working life: Mass near Pimentel, supper with his former priests, the shrine where he entrusted his ministry to Mary, according to a note he left in its guest book in 2015, and the university that gave him an honorary doctorate (EWTN News, November 2). Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, reached by helicopter, is a town in the Diocese of Chiclayo that he visited regularly as bishop (EWTN News).

The rest of the Peruvian route draws a map of the country’s Catholicism. Lima has the politics: he will meet President Keiko Fujimori, and the square outside the cathedral hosts the meeting on the country’s future. National Catholic Reporter recalls that in the 1990s, as a formation director in Trujillo, Prevost marched in support of human rights while her father, Alberto Fujimori, was president. Cusco is the meeting with popular devotion, Pucallpa the Amazon. The last Mass is at Las Palmas, where the organizers say they expect at least 1.2 million people (Msgr. Inca, in El Peruano, September 23). That is their estimate.

The other two countries have their own stories. Uruguay’s church is small; Cardinal Daniel Sturla of Montevideo called it “poor and small, but free and beautiful” (National Catholic Reporter). Argentina is the homeland of Pope Francis, who never went back during his twelve years as pope, and Archbishop Jorge García Cuerva of Buenos Aires has warned against treating Leo as a stand-in: “The successor of Peter is coming, not the successor of Francis” (to Clarín, as reported by National Catholic Reporter). Leo will meet President Javier Milei, whose spending cuts Argentina’s bishops have criticized. The Associated Press reported on October 29 that survivors of clergy abuse in Argentina are divided over the visit, some hoping to meet him and others opposing it, and that they want Rome to act against convicted priests.

The question the crowds will not answer

The stadiums should fill. They will fill with people who stayed. The figures below come from Pew Research Center, whose report of January 2026 rests on a spring 2024 survey of more than 6,200 adults in six countries. Uruguay was not among the six, so its figures come from older Pew work and are not directly comparable.

The common story is that Latin Catholics have left for evangelical churches. It is partly true and increasingly incomplete. Pew counts Protestants as one group, which takes in the evangelical and Pentecostal churches people usually mean, and it found that Protestant shares have stayed relatively stable across the region since 2013–14, while the unaffiliated have grown. Argentina now has more unaffiliated adults than Protestants. In four of the six countries more former Catholics have become unaffiliated than Protestant. Peru is closer: 9% of all adults were raised Catholic and are now Protestant, 7% were raised Catholic and now have no religion, and Protestants remain the country’s second-largest group. Brazil, not on this journey, is the only one where the Protestant path clearly leads.

Three more findings change the picture.

• Most “nones” in these surveys have not stopped believing. Majorities of them say they believe in God, 62% in Argentina. Pew calls Latin American “nones” about as religious, on average, as Christians in Europe.
• The Catholics who stay often do not come. In Argentina 12% of Catholics say they attend at least weekly, against 63% of Protestants.
• The young are the least attached. In all six countries younger adults are much less likely than older adults to be Catholic, and younger adults are generally more likely to be unaffiliated.

Why do they go? Pew’s 2024 survey did not ask. Its 2013–14 survey did: among people raised Catholic who had become Protestant, the most common reason chosen was that they “wanted a more personal experience with God.” Other common reasons were the style of worship, a greater emphasis on morality, a church that reached out to and helped its members, and being approached by a Protestant church member.

What the Bible says about shepherds

Scripture below is from the Berean Standard Bible unless marked; the explanations are our own.

The journey’s first motto comes from Scripture, Vatican News says: “I bring you news of great joy,” the angel’s words to the shepherds in Luke 2:10. The BSB has “good news of great joy that will be for all the people”. The two texts that bear on a shepherd’s journey come later.

John 21:15–17: “Feed My sheep.” After the resurrection Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves him, and three times gives him the flock.

¹⁵ When they had finished eating, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love Me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus replied, “Feed My lambs.” ¹⁶ Jesus asked a second time, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus told him, “Shepherd My sheep.” ¹⁷ Jesus asked a third time, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” Peter was deeply hurt that Jesus had asked him a third time, “Do you love Me?” “Lord, You know all things,” he replied. “You know I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep.

The scene follows Peter’s three denials, so its first meaning is restoration: a man who failed is given his work back. The charge is about love and feeding. The translations differ in a small way that matters later. In verse 16 the BSB has “Shepherd My sheep”, the American Standard Version “Tend my sheep”, and the King James Version “Feed my sheep”.

1 Peter 5:1–3: “not lording it over.” The letter, written in Peter’s name, speaks “as a fellow elder” to the elders of the churches: “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is among you, watching over them not out of compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not out of greed, but out of eagerness; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:1–3). In the BSB and the ASV the charge to the elders uses the same word as Jesus’ charge to Peter (“Be shepherds”, “Tend the flock”). As the letter presents it, the man who received that charge now passes it on, and calls himself their fellow.

What these passages do not say. Neither mentions Rome, a pope or a successor, and neither says anything about travel. Nor does either settle whether the charge belonged to Peter alone. That is interpretation, and it is where the traditions part.

Two other verses get used about people who leave, and they need care. “They went out from us, but they did not belong to us” (1 John 2:19) is about those John calls antichrists, who deny “that Jesus is the Christ” (2:22). It cannot fairly be pointed at a Catholic who became a Pentecostal and confesses Christ, or at someone who drifted. Closer to the mark is John 6:66–68, where “many of His disciples turned back”, Jesus asks the Twelve, “Do you want to leave too?”, and Peter answers, “Lord, to whom would we go?” Leaving is as old as the Gospels, and John does not pretend otherwise.

What different Christians think

Catholic. The Catechism teaches that the Lord made Peter the rock of his Church and “instituted him shepherd of the whole flock”, and that this pastoral office continues in the bishops under the primacy of the Pope (Catechism, 881–882). The First Vatican Council (1870) cites “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep” for Peter’s primacy, and Jesus’ words “strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32) for the faith of his see. On this view a pope’s journey carries out a charge given to Peter, and the Press Office describes this one as a mission to “encourage the faithful”.

Orthodox. Orthodox churches honor Rome as the first see of the early Church but do not accept that the Pope holds authority over the whole Church. The joint Catholic–Orthodox commission said at Chieti in 2016 that in the early centuries Rome exercised “a primacy of honour”, and that the Western understanding of that primacy as Peter’s inheritance “was not adopted in the East”.

Protestant. The classic Reformation answer is John Calvin’s, in the Institutes (Book 4, chapter 6). He argues from the very passage above: as Peter received the command, “so he exhorts all other presbyters to feed the Church”, so Jesus’ words gave Peter nothing more than the others had. The Scriptures show Peter as “one of twelve, their equal and colleague, not their master.” Evangelical and Pentecostal churches have no single body to speak for them, and we did not find a statement on this journey from their national federations in Uruguay, Argentina or Peru. The former Catholics in Pew’s survey who became Protestant gave reasons of faith and community, which is a different account from a Church simply losing members.

Our take

This is our own view, not a ruling for any church, and readers on all sides may disagree with it.

This journey will matter less for its crowds than for whether it speaks to the people who have left. A million people at Las Palmas would prove that Peru loves its pope. It would prove little else, because the people the Church has lost will not be in the crowd. The people to care about are the 24% of Argentine adults with no religion, the “nones” who still believe in God, and the young adults in every country surveyed.

The evangelical story is the wrong frame, and it flatters the Church. It is more comfortable to think that you have lost people to a rival than to think that they left for nothing at all. In Peru the rival is real. In Argentina the larger loss is to no church. Most of those people still say they believe in God, which suggests that what they gave up on was not God. Pew’s old finding about those who became Protestant, that they wanted “a more personal experience with God”, is an indictment any pastor should take personally, and a Protestant pastor should not assume it stops at the Catholic door: Pew also finds that former Protestants tend to end up as “nones”.

On Peter, we think Calvin reads 1 Peter 5 better than the Catholic argument does. John 21 and 1 Peter 5 do not, on their face, establish an office over the whole Church, and we do not think they can carry that weight alone. Catholics rest the claim on more than these verses, and on history, and that is a real argument; but the text itself passes the shepherd’s work to all the elders. Yet that gives Leo his best test, one both sides can accept. Peter’s own standard is not rank. It is “not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.”

So watch the small rooms. Watch Casavalle, the prison on November 11, the elderly shelter on November 16, the youth vigils in Buenos Aires and Lima, and above all the meetings with abuse victims that are not on the programme. The record he brings to those meetings is disputed. As a bishop he met victims of the Sodalitium and sought justice for them, National Catholic Reporter reported. In Chiclayo, three sisters who reported abuse by two priests have accused him of mishandling their complaints. The diocese denies it, saying he ordered a preliminary inquiry and sent the findings to the Vatican, and Leo has said he believed the sisters from the start and offered them psychological and legal support, which one of the sisters disputes. Keeping those meetings private may protect survivors, and that matters. But a shepherd is judged by the sheep that were hurt, and anyone who left over how they were treated will care more about what comes of those rooms than about anything said in a stadium.

Over to you

What do you think has drawn so many Latin Americans raised Catholic away from the Church, some to Protestant churches and more to none at all, and what could a visit like this one change? If you are one of them, or you love someone who is, tell us how it happened.

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