Pope Leo XIV returns to Peru, where 494 Spanish missionaries await him

Pope Leo XIV arrives today in Peru, the country where he served as a missionary for more than 20 years and where he was ordained a bishop. On this third leg of his trip through the Americas, the pope will visit all three of Peru's regions, the coast, the highlands and the jungle. Waiting for him are the 494 Spanish missionaries from a range of congregations and charisms who work in the country.

Peru hosts more Spanish missionaries than any other country. Among those attending the papal visit will be José Luis Calvo, a priest from Salamanca who has served since 2011 in a parish in the desert hills on the southern edge of Lima. Maria del Carmen Yugueros, of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who care for the neediest elderly, will travel more than 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) to be present at the events in the capital.

Anticipation in Chiclayo, the pope's city

The pope will also travel to Chiclayo, the city where he served as bishop and where much of his pastoral career took place. Lourdes Redondo, a missionary of the Instituto Secular de las Cruzadas de Santa María (Secular Institute of the Crusaders of Saint Mary), works at the Universidad Católica Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo (USAT). The pope was the university's chancellor during his years as bishop. She has been in Chiclayo for just over six years.

"I knew him then," Redondo said. "There is a lot of anticipation about the pope's visit, even more here in Chiclayo, because it is his city, and at the university, because it is the pope's university." She will take part in the meeting with religious, priests and pastoral workers, though she warned about the conditions. "On top of that we have the threat of the El Niño phenomenon hanging over us, with heavy rain across this whole area which, since it is not prepared for it (it is a desert area where it does not rain and so there are no sewers)... we are praying that not much happens," she said.

Along with the weather, there is the logistical challenge. "A great deal of effort is going into this because the infrastructure here is not like Spain's," she said from Chiclayo.

The Amazon gathering in Pucallpa

On Sunday, November 15, the pope will travel to the Amazon region to celebrate Mass and meet missionaries and indigenous peoples from the eight apostolic vicariates. Javier Pla, a priest of the Instituto Español de Misiones Extranjeras (IEME, the Spanish Institute for Foreign Missions), lives in San José del Amazonas, near the Putumayo river, where 37 communities are spread along 800 kilometers (500 miles) of river. "People here are waiting for the pope with great excitement, with the added fact that he is also a Peruvian national. This is going to be madness," he said.

Pla also noted the breadth of the pope's itinerary. "Peru has three zones: the coast, the highlands and the jungle, and the pope is going to be in all three." The journeys involved are long. Ricardo García, a priest from Burgos in the vicariate of San Ramón, will travel to Pucallpa with 160 people from four parishes and 300 young indigenous people from one of the shelters the Catholic Church runs there.

"For us it is going to be a joyful meeting with Leo XIV, even though the journey is long, because we have 16 hours by boat from Atalaya (those from Oventeni have another seven hours by car on dirt roads) to Pucallpa along the Ucayali, one of the rivers that form the Amazon," García told Obras Misionales Pontificias, the Pontifical Mission Societies. In the weeks beforehand they have prayed, worked on raising awareness among the young people and even written a song for the meeting with the pope.

The eight vicariates: mission territories without resources

Pucallpa is one of Peru's eight apostolic vicariates, along with Iquitos, Jaén en Perú, Puerto Maldonado, Requena, Yurimaguas, San José del Amazonas and San Ramón. They are among the Church's 1,132 mission territories, which come under the Dicastery for Evangelization rather than the Dicastery for Bishops, as other dioceses do. Most are vast areas entrusted by the Holy See to missionary congregations, where dozens of Spanish missionaries have worked and given their lives.

These church jurisdictions have few resources. They do not reach the status of a diocese because they lack the staff and the funding to support themselves, and so they depend on the support of the wider Church. The pope watches over them through Obras Misionales Pontificias (OMP), the Pontifical Mission Societies. OMP channels donations worldwide from Domund, the annual World Mission Sunday collection, to provide fixed, steady support each year for the basic costs of evangelization.

Over the past 50 years, OMP has distributed more than $32 million among the eight vicariates. The funds have paid for 422 chapels and 73 parishes in communities scattered across the Amazon, 84 houses for missionaries, 40 mission centers and two major seminaries.