Pope Leo Peru Visit Draws Record Crowds in Lima
The first pope with Peruvian citizenship returned to the country where he spent about 20 years. He urged President Keiko Fujimori to heal old wounds and met six victims of abuse by clergy.
LIMA, Nov 13 – Pope Leo’s visit to Peru has drawn the largest crowds of his papacy, with local officials estimating that 3 million people lined the streets of Lima when he arrived on Wednesday.
Leo, who was born in Chicago, spent about 20 years in Peru as a missionary and later as bishop of Chiclayo. He holds Peruvian citizenship, making him the first pope to do so.
In a speech at the Gran Teatro Nacional hours after landing, he said much of his own story belongs to the country. He mentioned friends he made there and his fondness for ceviche.
“I am returning to my homeland,” Leo said.
Crowds pressed against police barriers as he rode through the capital in an open-air popemobile. Lima’s historic center was largely closed on Thursday as people again packed the streets.
Leo greeted them as “my dear Peruvian people” and said they had made him feel at home.
Carmen Moreno, 78, said she waited seven hours with her daughter in the Plaza de Armas to see him pass and “He is returning to the land where he became who he is.”
Moreno said she was also concerned about crime, which has risen in Peru in recent years, and hoped the pope would pray for it to decline.
The turnout is the largest for a pope since about 7 million people greeted Francis in the Philippines in 2015. The Vatican said it beat the 2.5 million who attended Leo’s Mass in Buenos Aires earlier in the week.
In his first official event, Leo addressed President Keiko Fujimori, who won a narrow election earlier this year amid fraud claims. He urged her to build trust among Peruvians and said past events should be handled with justice and sensitivity.
The remarks were widely read as a reference to her father, former President Alberto Fujimori, who governed from 1990 to 2000 and was later jailed for human rights abuses. He was pardoned in 2017 and died in 2024. At the time of the pardon, Leo, then Bishop Robert Prevost, said Fujimori should personally seek forgiveness from his victims.
Keiko Fujimori said in her welcome that the visit was an invitation for Peru to complete its unfinished work of reconciliation.
On Thursday, Leo met six people who were abused by Catholic clergy in Peru. The Vatican said he spent more than an hour with them and spoke to each person individually.
In a meeting with Peru’s bishops earlier the same day, he said the Church must make amends to victims and build a culture of prevention.
Critics had complained that conservative figures in the Peruvian Church tried to keep such meetings off his schedule. The United States group Bishop Accountability last week published a list of 77 Peruvian clergy and lay members accused of abuse.
The visit has also boosted business. In Lima’s Gamarra garment district, clothing maker Victoria Quinones said she expected her workload to triple because of demand for pope-themed shirts. Inmates at the country’s largest women’s prison are making velvet dolls of Leo, and a 14-meter statue of him was erected in the port city of Callao.
A state-backed tourist route through places where he worked in northern Peru has drawn more than 1 million visitors since his election in May 2025, according to the tourism agency PromPeru.
It said the route generated 450 million soles, or about $125 million, in its first year.
Leo is due to travel to Chiclayo on Friday, where he served as bishop from 2015 to 2023 and is still known locally as “Padre Roberto.” Residents recall him delivering food and administering last rites during the COVID-19 pandemic, and raising money to buy oxygen plants for local hospitals.
Yolanda Diaz, 72, who worked with him in the diocese, said he rarely sat behind a desk: “He was a man of action, not just words,” she said.
From Chiclayo, he will travel to Cusco and the Amazon city of Pucallpa before returning to Lima. Peru is the final stop of a South American tour that began in Uruguay and Argentina.
The 71-year-old pope started the trip less than a month after surgery to remove part of a lung following a cancer diagnosis. His doctors have since given him the all-clear.
