After lung surgery, Pope Leo flies to South America. Will he reach every country?
The Vatican says Pope Leo, 71, will visit Uruguay, Argentina and Peru from 6 to 17 November. He had lung cancer surgery on 13 October.
What happened
The Vatican confirmed that Pope Leo will go on his South American trip as planned, after his surgery for lung cancer on .
The Vatican says Pope Leo’s South America trip goes ahead. On it said the 71-year-old head of the Catholic Church will visit Uruguay, Argentina and Peru from 6 to , with no changes to the plan published earlier. His personal doctor, Luigi Carbone, found no medical reason to stop the trip.
On surgeons in Rome removed the lower part of his right lung after doctors found lung cancer. He left hospital on and has slowly gone back to work.
The plan has 10 cities, about 31,000 km and 36 speeches. The Independent says it is expected to be one of the most intense foreign trips by a Catholic leader in decades. He flies to Montevideo in Uruguay on , moves to Buenos Aires in Argentina on and to Lima in Peru on . He leaves Peru on and lands in Rome the next morning.
Apostolic Journey of the Holy Father to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru (6–)
The Holy See, programme of the journey on vatican.va
On the Vatican cancelled his visit to Assisi in Italy, planned for , on his doctors’ advice. The aim was to avoid a helicopter flight while he recovers. The plan for Peru still has two helicopter flights on , from Chiclayo to a Mass in Santa Cruz de Succhabamba and back.
Pope Leo has Peruvian citizenship and lived in Chiclayo for several years. He said he looks forward to “returning to the continent where I’ve experienced so many moments of my life“.
Sources: bbc.co.uk
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a pope over 70 went on a foreign trip of eight days or more to three or more countries, under a plan the Vatican published. We found nine such trips, from 1970 to 2026. Seven of them were made by John Paul II. The Vatican’s online list of papal trips starts with Paul VI in 1964.
Show the other 7 cases
The Read
On each of the nine trips the pope reached every country on the plan and said farewell in the last one. On three of them the press wrote about trouble on the way. In 1970 Paul VI kept his Manila programme after an attack at the airport. In 2002 The New York Times wrote “For Many, Pope’s Frailties Now Define Papacy“, and John Paul II still went on to Guatemala and Mexico. Pope Leo’s trip runs 10 days from Rome to the farewell in Peru, as long as the three longest of the nine.
There are reasons for doubt. None of the nine trips began weeks after an operation, and each time the same body decided the plan: the Holy See. Seven of the nine trips were made by one man, John Paul II. For the older trips the Vatican pages list the pope’s speeches but not the first plan, so a small event dropped then may not show. In 2023 Pope Francis cancelled a three-day trip to Dubai on his doctors’ advice, and this month their advice already stopped the Assisi visit.
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