Peruvian woman who called out to Pope Leo XIV outside Rome hospital joins Assisi peace meeting

Glenda Katya Alvarado Cáceres, 54, a native of Chiclayo, Peru, is taking part from October 25 to 27 in the International Meeting for Peace in Assisi, organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio, a Rome-based Catholic lay movement. She has lived in Rome for seven years and became known for shouting to Pope Leo XIV, "Father Roberto, Chiclayo is with you!" as he was discharged from Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic after surgery.

While the pope was in the hospital, Katya prayed outside the building, and she was in the front row when he appeared before the crowd. The words came out on their own, she said afterward: a mixture of relief and emotion held in for too long. Her heart remains in Chiclayo, where her daughter and her mother live, the same city the pope also carries deep within him.

At the Meeting for Peace she is entrusting the pope's full recovery to St. Francis, the saint of the Umbrian city, and she will wear traditional Peruvian dress in Assisi, proud of the country she loves. Her connection with the pope predates his election. As bishop of Chiclayo, Robert Prevost walked among people without any fuss, celebrated the Eucharist outdoors and never refused to lend a hand when a specific need arose. During the pandemic, when oxygen or medicines ran short, he delivered them himself without fear.

A story of welcome

Katya's start in Italy was difficult. For years she taught traditional dance in Peru until a knee condition forced her to stop. She traveled to Italy to join her brother, who could not put her up, and she struggled to find housing and rebuild her life in a country she did not know. She planned to stay barely a year, but the 2020 pandemic kept her in Rome. She has been back to Latin America only once since then. That trip coincided, almost improbably, with the election of Robert Prevost as Successor of Peter, the same man she had passed so many times on the streets of Chiclayo.

The Community of Sant'Egidio helped her when she needed it most. "They are my family," Katya said. The Community found her housing and a job, made it possible for her to study cultural mediation and gave her a place for three years in a house for victims of human trafficking. "I was depressed, disoriented; it was very hard. But they took me in," she said. In her words, the Community literally saved her life. She also remembers taking part in Rome in 2020 in the rite of the candelabrum of peace alongside Pope Francis, part of the spirit of Assisi that has been renewed for 40 years. Those experiences move her deeply, because for her they represent the warmth of fraternity lived in community.

Katya now works in health and social care and has spent the past year looking after people with Alzheimer's. She describes the work as exhausting and says she constantly asks for "the gift of fortitude and of mercy" to care for people with illnesses that damage mental health. She tries to bring singing and dance into her daily work with patients. She said with sorrow that many families leave their elderly relatives with dementia to caregivers and never concern themselves with them again, though that is not the norm where she works.

Chiclayo in her heart

She misses home too much to stay in Europe indefinitely. Katya plans to return to Chiclayo as soon as she finishes her studies in cultural mediation. She remembers clearly the years she worked with a nongovernmental organization and saw children whose only prospect was to join their parents in farm work, in a country where many people still lack water, enough food or access to education.

But she believes something is changing in her city. "Chiclayo will be beautiful, and when the pope sees it he will be surprised: he wanted it to be reborn, to rise out of its poverty, and that is happening. Tourists are even coming," Katya said. Her daughter has already signed up as a volunteer to welcome Pope Leo XIV when he visits the city. Katya describes the coming visit as a mission to confirm people in the faith: "For me, he is a saint. That is why we were so afraid when the tumor appeared. We cried. People prayed a great deal. I am sure that many people will convert."