Pope Leo XIV arrives in Argentina on Sunday, the first papal visit to the country in 39 years, fulfilling a wish of his predecessor Pope Francis, who had hoped to return to his homeland but never made the journey. Leo will spend November 8 to 11 in Argentina, visiting Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Lujan, and the visit is the second leg of a 12 day, three country tour that began in Uruguay on Friday and will end in Peru on November 17. For Argentina, the wait has been long, and the symbolism is heavy: a pope is coming home to the country that produced Francis, but it is not Francis.
Why it matters
The legacy of Francis hangs over the visit. He was the first pope from Latin America, the first from Argentina, and the first Jesuit, and his papacy reshaped the Church idea of itself. He never returned to Argentina during his 12 years as pope, for reasons that were never fully explained, and his absence became a wound in the country public life, a source of pride that he was theirs and of pain that he never came back. Leo visit will honour that legacy, and it will do so in the places that shaped Francis: Buenos Aires, where he was archbishop, Cordoba, and Lujan, the shrine that is the spiritual heart of Argentine Catholicism.
The visit is also a political one, although the Vatican would not put it that way. Leo, who has decried the direction of global leadership in recent months, will address the government in each of the three countries, and he will visit a prison in Argentina, a gesture that carries weight in a country where the Church has long worked with the poor and the imprisoned. The tour, with its 36 speeches and around 50 events, is one of the most intense papal trips of recent years, and the Argentina leg is the one where the pope must balance tribute with leadership, honouring a predecessor while establishing his own voice.
What happens next
The physical demands of the tour do not pause for Argentina. Leo is 71, and he underwent surgery last month to remove the lower lobe of his right lung after a small growth was confirmed as cancer. His surgeon said there were no clinical reasons why the visit should not take place, and Vatican officials said he completed his two week recovery and requires no further treatment. The programme has not been adjusted, and the pope will travel by helicopter, give speeches, and preside at large open air Masses and vigils. The Argentina leg is the middle of the journey, and the test of whether the pace can be sustained.
What happens next is the road to Peru, where Leo will arrive on November 11 for the longest and most personal leg of the tour, to the country where he spent two decades as a missionary and bishop. But Argentina will be remembered as the leg where the tour found its meaning, because a pope visiting the homeland of his predecessor is not a routine stop. It is an act of continuity, a statement that the Church remembers its own, and that the work Francis began will continue. For Argentina, it is a homecoming delayed by 39 years, and a chance to welcome a pope who is not Francis, but who comes in his name.
