Pope Leo XIV was greeted by the largest crowd of his papacy as he arrived in Peru on Wednesday, telling crowds in Lima that returning to the country where he served as a missionary for two decades felt like coming home.

The crowds, estimated at three million by local officials, pressed against police barriers waving balloons and flags and chanting his name as the pope toured the capital in an open-air popemobile, smiling and waving. A Vatican statement, citing local officials, said the turnout set another record for the biggest crowd of his papacy, after an estimated 2.5 million people attended an outdoor Mass he celebrated in Buenos Aires earlier in the week.

Leo, the first Peruvian citizen to lead the Catholic Church, landed in the port city of Callao, where children holding flowers greeted him on the tarmac. Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori welcomed him at the airport before he travelled to the presidential palace and then to Lima's Gran Teatro Nacional for his first address in the country.

"I am returning to my homeland"

Speaking at the Gran Teatro Nacional, the pope said the return visit held a very special meaning for him, mentioning friendships made during his twenty years in the country and his love for ceviche, the national dish.

He told the audience that he now understood how much of the land remained with him, and how much of his own story also belonged to Peru. With deep gratitude, he said, he could tell them he was returning to his homeland.

Leo was born in Chicago and spent more than twenty years in Peru as a missionary priest and later as bishop of the northern city of Chiclayo, a post he held from 2015 to 2023. He has held Peruvian citizenship since 2015. Crowds lined the streets of the capital for miles to welcome him, and the main plaza erupted into cheers as a big screen showed his plane touching down.

Peru has prepared for the homecoming with fervour. A 14-metre statue of Leo with outstretched arms towers over a seaside park in Callao, merchants in Lima are selling pope-themed shirts and souvenirs, and inmates at the country's largest women's prison have stitched velvet dolls bearing his likeness.

A delicate message to Fujimori

In the first of his 22 scheduled events in Peru, the pope also waded into the country's politics. In a closely watched speech to President Fujimori, he urged her to build confidence among her people after her narrow election victory earlier this year, and he alluded to the contested legacy of her father, the late former President Alberto Fujimori.

Alberto Fujimori was in office from 1990 to 2000 and spent many years in jail after leaving the presidency, convicted of human rights abuses. He was pardoned in 2017 and died in 2024. Leo, then Bishop Robert Prevost, criticised the pardon at the time, saying the former president should personally seek forgiveness from victims if Peru was to achieve genuine reconciliation.

In Lima, the pope said past events deserved to be treated with justice and sensitivity, leaving room for harmony to grow and for differences to be addressed with respect. Without referring directly to the internal conflict that lasted from around 1980 to 2000, he said Peru had endured difficult times that tested the country, and he called on Peruvians to cultivate honesty, integrity and a willingness to engage with others.

In her welcome, President Fujimori said the visit was an invitation for Peru to pursue its unfinished task of national reconciliation. She leaned heavily on her father's political legacy during her presidential campaign, pledging uncompromising security measures to deal with rising crime.

The final stop of a record tour

Peru is the final and most personal stop on Leo's three-nation, 12-day tour of South America, which began in Uruguay and continued in Argentina. During his three days in Argentina he drew vast crowds, including an estimated 2.5 million people at an outdoor Mass in Buenos Aires and two million at another Mass outside the shrine of Our Lady of Lujan. He also visited one of Argentina's largest prisons, where he hugged inmates and urged guards to treat detainees humanely.

The six-day visit to Peru runs until Monday 16 November. It will include three days in Chiclayo, where he was bishop, and trips to Lambayeque, Ucayali, Cajamarca, Cusco and Pucallpa, taking him from the Amazon to the Andes.

Leo began the trip less than a month after lung cancer surgery, and he has appeared in good form, delivering long speeches in a firm, clear voice. For the people who waited for hours to see him in Lima, the homecoming was the moment the tour had been building towards.