Pope in emotional return to ‘beloved’ Chiclayo

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CHICLAYO: Pope Leo XIV returns on Friday to Chiclayo, the Peruvian city where he served as bishop for nearly a decade and where locals and old friends are ...

CHICLAYO: Pope Leo XIV returns on Friday to Chiclayo, the Peruvian city where he served as bishop for nearly a decade and where locals and old friends are eagerly awaiting him.

The visit is the emotional highlight of the pope’s South America tour, bringing him back to neighborhoods that knew Robert Francis Prevost before he was chosen to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, and remember him fondly.

The US-born pope, who also holds Peruvian citizenship, paid tribute in Spanish to his “beloved Diocese of Chiclayo” from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in his first speech as pope.

The 71-year-old has been so eager to return that not even lung cancer surgery last month could delay a trip that has taken him through Uruguay and Argentina to Peru.

In the coastal city where Leo served from 2015 to 2023, his image is everywhere, from merchandise to murals.

Bishop Prevost “left a significant mark here, through his personal style, his character, and his actions,” Jorge Villegas, vicar general of the Diocese of Chiclayo, told AFP. “He reached every last corner of the Diocese of Chiclayo, a region where the geography is far from easy.”

Prevost stayed close to the poor and local communities through hard times, including the COVID-19 pandemic and devastating floods, at one point putting on rubber boots to wade through muddy water to help those in need.

Locals remember his “solidarity”, Villegas said, “standing by us during several natural disasters”. He also led the construction of plants that produced life-saving oxygen during the pandemic, he said.

Leo will lead a mass on the Pampas de Pimentel, a vast, hot desert plain on Peru’s northern coast that is expected to draw around a million pilgrims, before meeting clergy and then staff and students at a Catholic university.

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