Pope Leo to embark on 11-day tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru

Pope Leo will undertake one of the most intensive trips by a Catholic leader in decades in November, leading around 50 events during an 11-day tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru.

Leo will travel around 31,000 km during the tour across 10 cities and will deliver 36 speeches, including an address to Argentine President Javier Milei.

Leo, who previously spent decades as a missionary in Peru, will also dine with priests of the northwestern Peruvian city of Chiclayo, where he served as bishop from 2015 to 2023.

Other events on the Pope’s itinerary for the November 6–17 tour include a visit to a federal prison complex in Buenos Aires, a Mass at a famous Catholic shrine in Luján, Argentina, and a special address on the challenges and hopes for the future of the Peruvian people in Lima.

Leo, a Chicago native, also holds Peruvian citizenship. The 71-year-old Pope is relatively young for a pope and enjoys good health. The South America trip will be his fifth tour outside Italy in 2026.

A Catholic Pope has not visited South America since the late Pope Francis made a trip to Chile and Peru in 2018. Francis, an Argentine native and the first Pope from the Americas, never made a visit to his birth country as pope.

Francis, who died in April 2025, made an even longer trip in September 2024, traveling nearly 33,000 km during a 12-day tour of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.

However, the Argentine Pope, at the time in uncertain health and using a wheelchair, held only about 30 activities during that tour.