After his election on May 8, 2025, when he was to present himself as Leo In addition to speaking in Spanish, the first American Pope evoked from Rome his small diocese on the northern Peruvian coast. That gesture awakened a collective illusion: the return to Peru of the man who watches over the faith of the Catholic Church.
That return is no longer a conjecture. This Wednesday the president of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Carlos García Camader, announced that only details remain to finalize the Pope’s visit to Peru. “When we mentioned him and invited him repeatedly, he also told us something important: ‘How much I would like to be in Peru’. He loves Peru, he is anxious; his face smiled when we talked about the subject,” said the prelate.
Leo XIV met last week in Rome with the bishops of the country’s 46 ecclesiastical jurisdictions. The Peruvian delegation presented him with a mosaic of the Virgin Mary and an image of Saint Rose of Lima, patron saint of the National Police and of America. Both pieces were placed in the Vatican gardens during a ceremony full of symbolism. It was at that meeting where progress was made in the coordination of a visit that already has a tentative date. “He said it clearly: it is very likely that it will be in November, at most in the first week of December. The date is 80% defined,” said García Camader.
Prevost left Peru in April 2023, after having served for seven and a half years as bishop of the diocese of Chiclayo. In parallel, during the pandemic, he was apostolic administrator of the diocese of Callao, the country’s main port. A scene became common in those years: the then bishop did not travel by plane to fulfill both responsibilities. He drove himself the almost 770 kilometers that separate Chiclayo from Callao. .
His link with Peru began with an early sign. His paternal uncle’s wife gave him a chullo – the Andean wool hat that protects from frost – when he was just five years old, after one of his trips. In the mid-eighties, when he was already a priest, the country crossed his path again. He was assigned to Chulucanas, a poor and suffocating town in the Piura region, where the Order of Saint Augustine had established a mission.
The second stage would be the most extensive. From the late eighties until 1999, Prevost lived in Trujillo, capital of La Libertad. There he was prior of the Augustinian community, director of formation, professor at the San Carlos and San Marcelo Major Seminary and judicial vicar of the archdiocese. He served as parish priest – the only time in his life – at the Nuestra Señora de Monserrat church and, years later, he promoted the construction of the Santa Rita de Cascia parish.
“After Mexico and the Philippines I have not seen as much fervor as in Peru. It is a living Church,” said Prevost, who as prior general of the Augustinians – a position he held in two terms – toured more than fifty countries. Since the beginning of his pontificate, at least half a dozen books have been published in Peru that reconstruct his time in the country, photographic exhibitions have been organized and tourist routes have been created around his figure. In October, a statue in his honor, five meters high and weighing half a ton, was inaugurated in Chiclayo. The future visit of the Pontiff takes place in a year marked by political uncertainty, when the .
