Pope Leo XIV returns to Peru, where he served as a missionary and bishop, and tells crowds “I am at home here”

Pope Leo XIV began a homecoming visit to Peru this week, telling crowds in Lima, “I have returned home. Here I am at home,” according to Vatican News, the Holy See’s official news service.

The pope, born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, called Peru home for more than two decades, Vatican News said. He first went there as a young Augustinian priest in 1985 and spent most of the 1990s in the northern city of Trujillo, training priests and running a parish in a poor neighborhood. He was bishop of Chiclayo, a city on the northern coast, from 2015 to 2023, and became a Peruvian citizen in 2015. He then moved to Rome to lead the Vatican office that helps the pope choose bishops, the job he held when he was elected pope in May 2025.

On his first day, Nov. 11, he met President Keiko Fujimori and spoke to officials and diplomats at Lima’s Grand National Theatre.  On Thursday he met Peru’s bishops and prayed in Lima’s cathedral, where he urged the church to seek reconciliation and ask forgiveness for the harm it has caused, Vatican News reported.  Outside, he told a crowd, “Let us value women.  Let us protect and respect girls.”

That afternoon he met for more than an hour with six survivors of abuse by members of the church, the Holy See Press Office said.  In the evening he led a youth prayer vigil at the National Stadium.

On Friday the pope returns to Chiclayo.  He is set to celebrate Mass in nearby Pimentel and meet members of the local church and university community.

Source:  Vatican News, Nov. 11, 2026; Vatican News, Nov. 12, 2026; Vatican News, Nov. 13, 2026; Vatican News biography of Pope Leo XIV, May 2025; Vatican News, Nov. 11, 2026, Lima address.