Pope Leo XIV arrived in Montevideo on Friday to start a three-nation South American tour less than a month after lung surgery.
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Pope Leo XIV arrived in Uruguay on Friday to begin a three-nation South American tour, landing in Montevideo after a nearly 14-hour flight from Rome.
Uruguay President Yamandú Orsi welcomed the pope at Carrasco International Airport, with bells pealing at parishes and churches across the country as Leo arrived under cloudy and windy skies.
The visit marks the first papal trip to Uruguay in nearly four decades; Pope John Paul II last visited in 1988.
Leo’s packed itinerary in Uruguay includes events in Montevideo and Masses in Paysandú, about 375 kilometres from the capital, and in the city of Florida, about 100 kilometres from Montevideo.
After Uruguay, the pope will travel to Argentina, where he will go following the late Pope Francis, who did not visit during his 12-year papacy, and then to Peru, where Leo holds citizenship and previously spent two decades as a missionary and bishop.
The tour is being carried out as the 71-year-old pope continues recovery following lung surgery on Oct. 13, with Vatican communications chief María Montserrat Alvarado saying he had passed the 14-day convalescence period required by doctors and that “His stamina is fantastic. The way that he's singing is incredible.”
Alvarado said doctors were confident and that the pope would have plenty of medical care on board should something happen, adding, “but we don't see that in his prognosis or even in the way that he's acting.”
Uruguay is described as Latin America’s most secular country, with around 3.5 million people and a small share of those who identify as Catholic attending Mass regularly, and the pope is expected to address Uruguay’s Catholic heritage and the role of faith in today’s challenges.
As part of the day’s programme, Leo met with Orsi, delivered his welcome address to government officials and diplomats, and finished with a vespers service at the city’s cathedral.
The pope is also expected to travel to Florida on Sunday for the Nov. 8 feast commemorating the Virgin of the Thirty-three, a wooden icon tied to Uruguay’s independence movement.
According to tradition described in the report, 33 independence patriots acquired the Guaraní statue and brought it with them when independence was declared from the Brazilian empire on Aug. 25, 1825.
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