Pope Leo XIV arrives in Peru on Wednesday, 11 November, for an emotional homecoming to the country that shaped his path to the papacy. The six-day visit, running until 17 November, is the final and longest leg of his first apostolic journey to South America, a trip that began on 6 November and has already taken him through Uruguay and Argentina.

Born Robert Francis Prevost, the pope first arrived in Peru as a young Augustinian missionary in 1985. He would spend more than two decades in the country, becoming a Peruvian citizen in 2015 and serving as bishop of Chiclayo, in the north of the country, from 2015 to 2023. His return is widely seen as a homecoming for a pontiff who knows the country in depth, speaks Spanish fluently and is regarded by many Peruvians as one of their own.

The visit will take the pope to four Peruvian cities: the capital, Lima; Chiclayo, his former diocese; Cusco, the former Inca capital high in the Andes; and Pucallpa, a city on the Ucayali River in the Amazon rainforest. He is expected to meet President Keiko Fujimori on his first day in Lima, and will celebrate Masses in Chiclayo, in the Andean town of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, in Pucallpa and at Las Palmas Air Base in Callao, outside Lima.

A pastor remembered in the hardest times

For many Peruvians, the memories that will be foremost as they welcome the pope are of the crises he shared with them. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when Peru recorded more than 219,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University figures, the then Bishop Prevost travelled hundreds of kilometres to help communities under lockdown, distributing food and offering spiritual guidance. In Chiclayo he launched a fundraising campaign with Caritas Chiclayo that raised more than 380,000 US dollars to buy two oxygen plants at a time when oxygen shortages were killing patients outside hospitals.

He was also on the front lines during natural disasters, wading through floodwater in rubber boots during the coastal El Nino flooding of 2017 and again after Cyclone Yaku struck northern Peru in 2023, when he led appeals for more than 10,000 people affected by the floods. Those who worked with him describe a bishop who was approachable, humble and close to his people, travelling alone in a small pickup truck to visit remote parishes.

Migrants, dialogue and human rights

Prevost also led the Church response to the arrival of Venezuelan migrants in Peru from 2018. Peru received more than 1.6 million Venezuelans through November 2025, the second-highest number in the region after Colombia. More than 20,000 passed through Chiclayo, and more than 3,500 families settled there, according to the Diocese of Chiclayo. He promoted a diocesan commission for human mobility and human trafficking, pushed to regularise migrants so they could work legally, and helped build a village for migrant families at Puerto Eten.

He also created spaces for dialogue about the violence of Peru's internal conflict and the authoritarian rule of the 1990s, encouraging communities to speak openly about abuses and helping to collect signatures for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated violence between 1980 and 2000. Trujillo and the parishes he led collected the largest number of signatures.

A demanding trip after surgery

The journey is a demanding one. The pope is travelling more than 19,000 miles on 14 flights across the three countries, delivering dozens of speeches and celebrating nine large Masses. He is undertaking it weeks after surgery in October, when doctors removed part of a lung, and his doctors confirmed in late October that he would be able to travel as planned.

Peru has declared half-day holidays in Lima and Callao for 11 and 12 November and a full holiday on 16 November, with road closures around the historic centre of Lima. The Diocese of Chiclayo said the visit would bring a message of faith, hope and closeness to millions of Peruvians, calling it a historic visit that will unite the country as a people and as a Church.