Pope heads up to Cusco, down to Amazon in post-cancer test

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CUSCO: Pope Leo XIV travels high into the Andes to Cusco on Sunday before heading down into the Amazon basin, testing his stamina after cancer surgery as he ...

CUSCO: Pope Leo XIV travels high into the Andes to Cusco on Sunday before heading down into the Amazon basin, testing his stamina after cancer surgery as he wraps up his South America tour.

The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, who had lung cancer surgery a month ago, refused to drop the UNESCO World Heritage Site from his itinerary despite Cusco’s altitude of more than 3,400 meters (11,000 feet).

In the former capital of the Inca Empire, he will climb even higher to Saqsaywaman, a massive hilltop fortress overlooking the city, to meet representatives of popular Catholic devotion.

The US-born pontiff has been on an intense 12-day trip through Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, rallying a declining faith, defending the poor and marginalized, and decrying regional ills from rising violence to falling birth rates.

Sunday, his last full day in Latin America, will be the most physically demanding for the 71-year-old as he travels between two of Peru’s most important cultural and geographic regions.

As Robert Francis Prevost, he served for almost two decades as a missionary in Peru, his adopted homeland, and his emotional homecoming will end in a key center of Catholicism.

Laid out by the Incas in the shape of a crouching puma, Cusco was partly destroyed during the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, but went on to become a major base for the evangelization of the Andes.

The pope will spend three hours in Cusco, leading prayers in front of the cathedral, before flying to Pucallpa, one of the largest cities in the Peruvian Amazon, to meet representatives of Indigenous Amazonian peoples.

The city, on the banks of the Ucayali River deep in the rainforest, is home to numerous timber businesses and an oil refinery, and serves as a gateway to surrounding rainforest communities.

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