Pope Leo begins 12-day South America tour in Uruguay

Pope Leo XIV arrived in Montevideo on Friday to begin a 12-day tour of South America, three weeks after surgery for a tumour on his right lung, and told reporters he was in "fairly good shape."

The 71-year-old pontiff's sixth international trip takes him to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru. Thousands of people, some waving yellow-and-white Vatican flags, lined the Uruguayan capital's seafront as he waved from a custom-built popemobile, Africanews reported.

The crowds were thinner than at his recent visits to France and Spain, in what Africanews described as Latin America's most secular country. Speaking in a half-empty Plaza Independencia after being welcomed by President Yamandu Orsi, Leo lamented Uruguay's high suicide rates, among the highest in the world, and called for healthcare to be "accessible to everyone."

He said the care he received after his cancer diagnosis had made him think of "many men and women who lack the means to obtain a timely diagnosis" or treatment. Asked on the flight across the Atlantic about his own illness, he advised others facing a cancer diagnosis "not to be afraid."

Leo celebrates Mass on Saturday in a park in Paysandu, in western Uruguay, where about 30,000 pilgrims are expected. He then returns to Montevideo to visit Casavalle, the capital's neighbourhood with the highest homicide rate, the Catholic University and the Centenario Stadium, where he will lead a prayer vigil for 60,000 people.

It is the first papal visit to Uruguay in nearly four decades. The country is at odds with the Church on same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia, which it legalised last year. Leo called for the "protection of the unborn" and also praised Uruguay's "remarkable" shift to renewable energy.

Peru is the centrepiece of the tour. Leo spent nearly two decades there as a missionary and calls it "one of my many homes." Vendors in Lima are selling T-shirts and rosaries bearing his image, bakeries are selling "Leo bread" and a 14-metre statue of the pope has been erected in the port city of Callao. He will visit Cusco and the Amazon, and will have supper with priests from his old diocese of Chiclayo.

On Sunday he travels to Argentina, homeland of his predecessor Pope Francis, who never returned during his papacy. "History's first Latin American pope, Francis, never returned to his homeland. Leo, a Peruvian citizen, now carries forward that mantle and legacy," Vatican expert Christopher White told AFP.

The first US-born pope, Leo also spoke on the plane about voting in this week's US midterm elections. His mail-in ballot made him the first pope known to have voted in a political election. "I'm proud to be an American and to exercise the right" to vote, he said.