After cancer surgery, Pope Leo embarks on Latin America trip with a first stop in secular Uruguay

By NICOLE WINFIELD and NAYARA BATSCHKE, Associated Press

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Pope Leo XIV arrived in Uruguay on Friday to begin a three-nation South American tour, less than a month after lung surgery and eight years after a pope last visited the continent.

With Uruguay’s President Yamandú Orsi on hand at Carrasco International Airport to welcome him and bells pealing at parishes and churches across the nation, the pontiff landed in Montevideo after a nearly 14-hour flight from Rome. It is the first papal visit in nearly four decades to Uruguay, Latin America’s most secular country; Pope John Paul II last visited in 1988.

The packed three-day itinerary in Uruguay includes a visit to a neighborhood plagued by gang violence, a Mass in Paysandú, around 375 kilometers (230 miles) from the capital, and another Mass in the city of Florida, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Montevideo.

The aircraft, adorned with the flags of the Vatican and Uruguay, touched down at 4:20 p.m. local time. The pontiff was offered a selection of traditional gifts, including a handwoven wool blanket and a traditional gaucho horse tack set.

After Uruguay, Leo will travel to Argentina, the homeland of the late Pope Francis, who never visited during his 12-year papacy. His last stop is Peru, where Leo holds citizenship and spent two decades as a missionary and bishop.

The trip to Latin America marks the longest and farthest of his pontificate, all being undertaken as the 71-year-old pope continues his recovery. The trip will also bring him to neighboring Argentina and finally back home to Peru, where Leo served as a missionary priest and bishop for two decades.

“His stamina is fantastic. The way that he’s singing is incredible. And you can only sing if your lungs are really strong,” said María Montserrat Alvarado, the Vatican’s new communications chief. She noted that Leo has passed the 14-day convalescence period required by doctors after his Oct. 13 surgery and is eager to get on the road.

“His doctors are very confident and he’ll have plenty of medical care on board should something happen, but we don’t see that in his prognosis or even in the way that he’s acting,” she said.

Secularism rules in Uruguay

In Uruguay, which hasn’t had a papal visit since 1988, Leo is expected to try to remind the 3.5 million people of their strong Catholic heritage stemming from the times of Spanish colonial rule. He’s likely to propose the faith anew as an answer to today’s challenges and problems.

Leo will meet with Orsi, leader of the center-left alliance that assumed power in March 2025, and then deliver his welcome address to government officials and diplomats. He finishes the long day with a vespers service at the city’s cathedral.

Leo will find in Uruguay a country unlike any other in Latin America, which is home to around 40% of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. Uruguay is considered the most secular country in the region, where only a fraction of people who identify as Catholic actually go to Mass regularly.

Uruguay’s secularism has roots in the weakness of its colonial church. With no gold or silver to mine, Spain valued the land of cattle ranches mainly as a buffer against Portuguese Brazil and left it largely unsettled. Montevideo was founded only in the 1720s, roughly two centuries after Mexico City and Lima.

With few priests and no local bishop, the church never became the powerful institution it was elsewhere in the empire. “Uruguay was colonized late, and that made Catholicism weaker,” said Gerardo Caetano, a Uruguayan historian.

Montevideo awoke to its usual calm. Along the waterfront, joggers were out for their morning runs and residents walked their dogs along the very same promenade that the pope is set to visit just a few hours later.

“We still don’t understand why he chose Uruguay, given that it’s a secular country, but we hope he leaves something positive behind,” said Mary Fernández while drinking mate, Uruguay’s beloved beverage.

The origins of the separation between church and state can be traced back to the 19th century, particularly to the spread of liberal ideas promoted by European intellectuals, who viewed religion as a symptom of backwardness or a lack of rationality, said Luis Bahamondes, a professor at the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Chile.

“While Latin America also experienced a separation of church and state, the Catholic Church has nonetheless maintained strong ties with the various states in the region,” he said. “In this context, Uruguay stands out as a paradigmatic example of how secularism can be implemented.”

This process went so far as to include the renaming of certain holidays to reflect their secular character — such as “Family Day” and “Tourism Week” — signaling that the “inherent weight of Catholicism had no place within the State’s official framework,” Bahamondes added.

Since then, Uruguay has become the first country in the world to legalize marijuana for recreational use, the second country in Latin America to decriminalize abortion, and the third country in the Americas to legalize same-sex marriage.

More recently, it became the first country in the region to approve assisted dying legislation despite the strong opposition of the Catholic Church.

Uruguayan church officials have marveled at the apparent enthusiasm that the visit has provoked, with reports that tickets to Leo’s prayer vigil at Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium were snapped up after two days.

“It seems that the pope’s presence is shifting something here and is gradually breaking down this veil that has always sought to obscure and diminish the presence of the Catholic tradition that lies at the country’s foundation,” said Guzmán Carriquiry, the Uruguayan former head of the Vatican’s pontifical commission for Latin America.

Recalling the Catholic origins of independence

Carriquiry said that he expects Leo will seek to revive the Catholic roots of Uruguay, especially when he travels to the city of Florida on Sunday to mark an important Catholic feast day.

The Nov. 8 feast commemorates the Virgin of the Thirty-three, a small wooden icon of the Virgin Mary that is intricately connected to Uruguay’s independence movement. According to tradition, 33 independence patriots acquired the Guaraní statue and had it with them when independence was declared from the Brazilian empire in Florida on Aug. 25, 1825.

“So the number 33 is an ecclesiastical symbol, a national symbol,” said Carriquiry. “And so the pope will speak there about the Catholic tradition that lies at the origin of Uruguay — that stems from Uruguay and gave rise to Uruguay — in order to revive and renew the Catholic tradition in the hearts of Uruguayans.”

Andrew Chesnut, chair of Catholic studies and an expert in the Latin American church at Virginia Commonwealth University, said that he wasn’t surprised that Leo’s visit had generated enthusiasm and that he will be welcomed warmly.

“But that’s not necessarily going to translate into folks in the pews,” he said. “If the overarching goal is trying to revitalize Catholicism in the most Catholic region on Earth, Uruguay is kind of a lost cause, and it has been for decades.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

This story has been corrected to show that the last name of the Vatican’s new communications chief is Alvarado, not Alvar.