Pope Leo XIV sets 11-day South America tour after cancer surgery

Pope Leo XIV will begin an 11-day tour of South America in Montevideo on November 6, leading more than 50 events fewer than three weeks after surgery to remove a cancerous lung tumour. The tour includes the first papal visit to Argentina since John Paul II in 1987. Leo, 71, heads the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.

The Buenos Aires Times reported that doctors found no need for further treatment and cleared Leo for a schedule with 12 flights, two helicopter trips and a high-altitude prayer in the Andes. The Vatican has said he remains in recovery. America Magazine reported that the Vatican described him as "enthusiastic" and "clinically fit" for the trip.

The tour runs to November 17 and covers Uruguay, Argentina and Peru. In Uruguay, Leo will be welcomed by President Yamandú Orsi. The Buenos Aires Times described Uruguay as Latin America's most secular country, with legal same-sex marriage, abortion and, since last year, euthanasia. The paper said the pope is expected to appeal for the protection of life there.

Leo reaches Argentina on November 8 and stays until November 11, according to MercoPress. In Buenos Aires he will meet President Javier Milei, a right-wing libertarian and a close ally of US President Donald Trump who had tense relations with the Church under Pope Francis. The Buenos Aires Times reported that officials expect seven million pilgrims and that local Church leaders have criticised the human cost of Milei's economic reforms.

The final leg is Peru, where Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost, served for nearly two decades and was bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023. He holds Peruvian citizenship and is the first US-born pope. The Buenos Aires Times reported that he will celebrate Mass on a desert plain near the Pacific, visit Cusco, the former Inca capital, at 3,400 metres for under three hours, and go to Pucallpa in the Amazon. In Lima he will meet President Keiko Fujimori, the right-wing daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who was jailed for corruption and crimes against humanity. Fujimori is Peru's ninth leader in a decade.

The paper said Leo is expected to address Peru's crime wave, contract killings, extortion, the cocaine trade and its impact on Indigenous peoples, the country's political instability, and the dignity of some 1.6 million Venezuelan migrants. It also said he will meet Amazon Indigenous peoples, clerical abuse victims, the elderly, poor and disabled.

Christopher White, a Georgetown University scholar and author of a book on Leo, told AFP that the trip would be "the most closely watched" of his papacy and "a feat even without his surgery." Elise Ann Allen, a US Vatican expert, told AFP that Leo had been "very determined to go" to Peru.