Pope Leo vows illness will not stop him as crowds fill Argentina

Pope Leo XIV told Argentines on Tuesday that illness and old age would not slow his work, preaching in Córdoba and then flying to Buenos Aires for a youth vigil less than a month after surgeons removed a cancerous tumour from his right lung.

The 71-year-old, who was born in the United States, is on a 12-day tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru and declined to reschedule it after the operation, according to the Buenos Aires Times.

At a Mass on the esplanade of a military aircraft factory in Córdoba, 650,000 pilgrims gathered, the Buenos Aires Times reported. Speaking to Catholic clergy in the city afterwards, the pope said: "Neither age nor physical limitations can extinguish our zeal." He added: "Our strength may run out, but God's power never will!"

In the evening he returned to Buenos Aires for a candlelit vigil that the Buenos Aires Times put at 1.3 million people, with tango dancers and Argentine singers on the programme. Bangkok Post described the day's crowds as "hundreds of thousands".

He used the vigil to warn against what he called idols: "success at any cost, money, an obsession with appearance, popularity or the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure". He named pornography and drugs among pleasures "that ultimately enslave us".

Bangkok Post reported that he also spoke of "my recent hospitalization" and urged bishops and priests to keep "persevering in the midst of suffering", remarks the outlet said would reassure those who feared he might follow Benedict XVI, who resigned in 2013 citing his declining health.

The trip is a double homecoming: it takes him to Peru, where he spent almost two decades as a missionary, and to Argentina, birthplace of his predecessor Francis, who never returned home as pope.

The visit has also been political. Across three days in Argentina, Leo has pressed President Javier Milei, who campaigned on cutting state spending, to make the economy more inclusive and to stop funding cuts that he says hurt the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities. Some in the crowds said that message brought them out. Laura Sosa, 49, who maintains Hercules aircraft at the state-owned company Fadea, told AFP that workers there had endured delayed wage payments, and that "there are a lot of people on the streets and people eating out of the garbage because their subsidies were taken away".

Catholics make up 56 percent of Argentine adults, down from 71 percent a little over a decade ago, according to the Pew Research Center.

On Wednesday the pope is due to visit a prison in Buenos Aires and hold a final Mass before travelling to Peru for the last leg of the tour.