Pope Leo XIV arrived in Peru on Wednesday, 11 November 2026, and was greeted warmly as he returned to a country he knows well. He holds Peruvian nationality and spent twenty years there, first as a missionary and later as a bishop, making the visit as much a homecoming as a papal journey.
His ties to the northern city of Chiclayo are especially strong. He led the diocese from 2015 to 2023, and crowds gathered to greet him chanted that the pope belongs to Chiclayo, a sign of the affection he built among local Catholics during his years there.
The highlight of the trip's first days is a giant Mass held near Chiclayo on Friday. On Saturday, the pope is scheduled to visit Zaña, a town about one hour from Chiclayo, to mark 300 years since the canonization of Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo.
Toribio died in Zaña in 1606. He is remembered as a sixteenth-century defender of enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples, and his anniversary gives the visit a historical and spiritual focus rooted in the local church's memory.