In November, Pope Leo will undertake one of the busiest overseas trips by a Catholic leader in recent decades, holding around 50 events during an 11-day tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, the Vatican said on Monday, UNN reports, citing Reuters.
Pope Leo will travel about 31,000 km (19,260 miles), visit 10 cities and deliver 36 speeches, including one before Argentina’s President Javier Milei — a right-wing libertarian considered a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The first U.S.-born Pope angered Trump earlier this year by criticizing the war with Iran.
Leo, who previously worked as a missionary in Peru for decades, will also have dinner with priests from the city of Chiclayo in the country’s northwest, where he served as bishop from 2015 to 2023.
Other events on the itinerary, which will run from November 6 to 17, include a visit to a federal prison complex in Buenos Aires, a Mass at the famous Catholic shrine in Luján, Argentina, and a special address "on the challenges and hopes for the future of the Peruvian people" in Lima.
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Leo, who is from Chicago, also holds Peruvian citizenship. The 71-year-old Pope is relatively young for a pontiff and is in good health. The trip to South America will be his fifth tour outside Italy in 2026.
The Catholic Pope had not visited South America since 2018, when the late Pope Francis traveled to Chile and Peru. Francis, who was from Argentina and became the first Pope from the Americas, never visited his homeland during his papacy.
Francis, who died in April 2025, made an even longer trip in September 2024, covering nearly 33,000 km during a 12-day tour of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.
However, the Argentine pontiff, whose health was poor at the time and who used a wheelchair, held only around 30 events during that tour.