Pope Leo Starts 12-Day South America Trip Weeks After Lung Cancer Surgery

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Pope Leo XIV has begun the longest and most far-reaching trip of his papacy, a 12-day tour of three South American countries and his first major overseas visit since lung cancer surgery.

Last month Leo had the lower lobe of his right lung removed. Vatican officials say he has finished a two-week recovery and needs no further treatment. The Vatican's new communications chief, Maria Montserrat Alvarado, said the pope was eager to go. "His doctors are very confident and he'll have plenty of medical care on board should something happen," she said.

The schedule is demanding. Leo will take 12 flights, including two helicopter rides, deliver 36 speeches and visit 10 cities. One of them is Cusco, Peru, which sits above 11,000 feet and where even healthy travelers can need supplemental oxygen for altitude sickness.

The tour opened in Uruguay, a small country of about 3.5 million people that is famously the most secular in Latin America. Crowds of up to 30,000 lined the streets to see his Popemobile pass, according to the Vatican, but the gathering at the central Plaza Independencia was much smaller and did not fill half the square. A proposed papal address to Uruguay's parliament drew a quick rebuke from the public and politicians and was scrapped. Left-wing President Yamandú Orsi instead presided over the welcome ceremony outside the main cathedral in Montevideo.

Leo moved quickly to Uruguay's liberal laws. Uruguay was the first Latin American country to legalize euthanasia by legislation, and in 2012 it became the second in the region, after Cuba, to legalize abortion. Speaking in Spanish, he stressed protecting family life and criticized both laws. "It is everyone's responsibility to ensure that each person can live with dignity, receive the care they need, and be accompanied until the natural end of his or her life," he said. Asked why the Vatican chose Uruguay at all, Alvarado answered, "Why not?" and added that "the Gospel is meant to go everywhere."

Only about a third of Uruguayans identify as Catholic and fewer practice, said pollster Mariana Pomiés of CIFRA. On Saturday the pope is due to visit the working-class Casavalle neighborhood, and on Sunday he will celebrate an open-air Mass at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Thirty-Three in the town of Florida.

By Sunday evening he arrives in Buenos Aires, fulfilling a wish of his predecessor Pope Francis, who hoped to return to his native Argentina but never did. The visit is an early test of how Leo handles the Catholic Church's differences with right-wing populist leaders gaining ground in Latin America. President Javier Milei's austerity measures have pushed millions of Argentines into poverty, which could put him at odds with a pope who has long championed the poor. Milei has also embraced data centers and light-touch artificial intelligence regulation, while Leo's first encyclical urged ethical caution and safeguards for human dignity. Leo has also clashed with President Trump over immigration.

The final stop is Peru, billed as a homecoming. Leo spent two decades there as a missionary priest and then as Bishop of Chiclayo, and he became a naturalized Peruvian in 2015. He will visit places where he lived and meet President Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former dictator Alberto Fujimori. As a priest during that dictatorship, Leo openly criticized military violence and human rights abuses.