Pope Leo XIV Addresses Half a Million People in His Old Hometown Diocese in Peru

Pope Leo XIV made an emotional arrival on Friday to Chiclayo, the northern region of Peru where he long served as bishop before being prompted to the Vatican and ultimately chosen as pope. An estimated half a million people met the pope there, according to Vatican News, in a vast desert plain area known as the Pampas of Pimentel in which authorities organized a congregation space for the pope to address the crowd and preside over Mass. The crowd that convened to welcome the pope to greater Chiclayo is believed to have included over a million people. For comparison, the city of Chiclayo is estimated to have a population of slightly over 630,000 people. Prior to the ceremony, Chiclayo locals staged a traditional music and dance number to celebrate the pope’s return and the earthly head of the Catholic Church took some moments to greet the massive audience. In the streets of Chiclayo, the majority Catholic population staged their own impromptu dance parties to welcome the pontiff, dancing the marinera, the national dance of Peru. The hundreds of thousands organizing to greet the pope for his Mass began arriving around midnight, according to the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, seeking a good position from which to listen to the pope’s words. The newspaper noted that the hot desert temperatures did not appear to deter the throngs awaiting him, despite knowing they would have to assemble hours in advance. One woman interviewed, who had followed the pope since his arrival to Chiclayo at around 8:30 a.m. local time, joked, “I’ve been chasing him around more than my husband!” The pope’s day in Chiclayo began with a 10:30 Mass in the Pampas of Pimentel following his arrival, which he used to address believers in what was once his home diocese. The message of his homily was to encourage Christians outside the clergy to also serve as missionaries in their own lives by living their lives consistent with the Christian message. Pope Leo arrived in Peru as a formal missionary but asserted that all who accept Jesus’s message serve in their own way as missionaries. “Here in Chiclayo, and throughout Peru, I invite you … to commit yourselves to sharing the living hope that is Jesus Christ and to let the Gospel ‘overflow’ from your villages, towns, and cities, proclaiming to all the ‘glory of the Lord,'” the pope said. All Christians, he emphasized, can engage in evangelization “through the witness of an authentically Christian and coherent life.” “Evangelization, therefore, does not mean imposing doctrines or trusting efficient strategies, but bearing witness to that real encounter with Christ,” he explained, which requires “profound respect for each person’s conscience and freedom.” Following the Mass, Pope Leo held meetings with local bishops, priests, and other clergy in the area with whom he once worked on a regular basis. In the evening, the pope has scheduled meetings with representatives of academia from the Catholic University of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo. Millions of people have gathered in Peru since Pope Leo’s arrival on Wednesday to hear him speak and pray with him. On Thursday, the pope held an event for local youth at the National Stadium in Lima, the capital, which attracted a full stadium. Young Catholics organized exchanges at the events for “freebies” – prayer cards, pins, and other handmade tokens to exchange modeled after similar fan art typical of Korean pop concerts. The pope is currently on the last leg of a three-nation tour of South America that began in Uruguay and continued to Argentina, before concluding in his former home of Peru. His visit generated similar enthusiasm in the first two countries he visited. In Argentina, the pope presided over a Mass in Buenos Aires that attracted 2.5 million people to the streets in the center of the city. He also held exchanges with President Javier Milei, a lapsed Catholic who bade him a tearful farewell upon his departure to Peru. In Uruguay, one of the continent’s smallest and most secular nations, hundreds of thousands similarly convened to greet the Catholic leader. The visit also allowed the pope to enjoy a traditional Uruguayan barbecue, an asado. The pope is expected to spend the weekend in various cities in Peru before returning to Rome on Tuesday. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.