By Joshua McElwee, Cassandra Garrison and Marco Aquino
LIMA, Peru, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Pope Leo was greeted by the largest crowd of his papacy in an emotional return to Peru on Wednesday, declaring the South American country where he served as a missionary for two decades his homeland.
The huge crowds, estimated at 3 million by local officials, pressed against police and security barriers, waving balloons and flags and chanting "Leo, Leo, Leo." The pope was all smiles as he toured in an open-air popemobile and waved energetically on the final leg of his three-country, 12-day trip.
In a closely watched speech to President Keiko Fujimori shortly after being greeted in Lima, the first Peruvian citizen to lead the Catholic Church urged the president to build confidence among her people after her narrow election victory earlier this year, and alluded to the contested legacy of her father, the late former President Alberto Fujimori.
"This return visit holds a very special meaning for me," the pope said at Lima's Gran Teatro Nacional, mentioning many friendships made in his 20 years in the country and his love for a national dish, ceviche.
"Today I understand how much of this land remains with me and how much of my own story also belongs to you," he said. "I can tell you, with deep gratitude, that I am returning to my homeland."
POIGNANT SCENES AS POPE RETURNS HOME
Leo, originally from Chicago, is visiting Peru on the final and most personal stop of the most intense overseas trip by a pope in decades, after touring Uruguay and Argentina.
The six-day visit is expected to include poignant scenes as the pope sees old friends and spends three days in the northern city of Chiclayo, where he was bishop from 2015 to 2023.
Crowds lined the streets of the capital for miles to welcome Leo, evoking images of previous papal trips to Catholic strongholds like the Philippines, Mexico and Brazil. The main plaza in Lima, filled with people waving flags and wearing pope-themed shirts, erupted into loud cheers as a big screen showed Leo's plane touching down.
Camila Cerazo, 27, arrived with her toddler, husband and relatives, saying she hoped her son might someday remember the excitement surrounding Leo’s arrival.
"Since people found out the pope had Peruvian nationality, they identified with him much more," she said.
Peru has prepared for the homecoming with fervor: a 14-meter (46-foot) statue depicting Leo with outstretched arms towers over a seaside park in Callao, while merchants in Lima are selling pope-themed shirts and souvenirs and inmates at the country's largest women's prison have stitched velvet dolls bearing his likeness.
WADING INTO POLITICS
In the first of his scheduled 22 events in Peru, Leo urged Fujimori to confront the wounds of the country's turbulent past, alluding to her father's contested legacy.
Alberto Fujimori was in office from 1990 to 2000 and spent many years in jail after leaving the presidency, convicted of human rights abuses. He was pardoned in 2017 and died in 2024.
"Past events deserve to be treated with justice and sensitivity, leaving room for harmony to grow and for differences to be addressed with respect," Leo said.
Without referring directly to an internal conflict that lasted from around 1980 to 2000, Leo said Peru had endured "difficult times" that have tested the country.
He called on Peruvians to cultivate "honesty, integrity, and a willingness to engage with others," saying those qualities were essential to sustaining trust and democratic institutions.
In her welcome to the pope, Fujimori said his visit was an invitation for Peru to pursue its "unfinished task" of national reconciliation.
When Alberto Fujimori was pardoned in 2017, Leo, then Bishop Robert Prevost, criticized the move, saying that the former president should personally seek forgiveness from victims if Peru was to achieve genuine reconciliation.
Keiko Fujimori leaned heavily on her father's political legacy during her presidential campaign, pledging uncompromising security measures to deal with rising crime.
Ahead of Leo's visit, Martin Cassinelli, an analyst at the Atlantic Council, said that any call for Peru to investigate its past would be unwelcome to President Fujimori.
"If there's anything that could potentially be at odds with the current Fujimori government, it would be a reflection on the past," Cassinelli said.
Relations between the late Fujimori's government and sectors of the Catholic Church were frequently tense, particularly over human rights during the state's fight against the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. Church figures also opposed the 1995 amnesty for members of the security forces accused of rights abuses.
A RECORD-SETTING TOUR
A Vatican statement, citing local officials, said that 3 million people greeted Leo on his arrival in Lima, setting another record for the biggest crowd of his papacy after an estimated 2.5 million people attended an outdoor Mass he celebrated in Buenos Aires earlier this week.
Leo ended the Argentina leg of his South American tour earlier on Wednesday with another outdoor Mass that drew a crowd of 2 million outside the shrine of Our Lady of Lujan, Argentina's most important Catholic devotional site.
The pope also visited one of Argentina's largest penitentiaries, where he hugged several inmates and urged guards to treat detainees humanely. During his three-day visit to Argentina, Leo urged consideration for the disadvantaged at a time when the Church has criticized President Javier Milei's austerity agenda for affecting the poor.
Milei's eyes welled with tears as he bade farewell to Leo on the tarmac, a surprising display of emotion from a president known for piling insults on Leo's Argentine predecessor, Francis.
Leo began the trip less than a month after lung cancer surgery and has appeared in good form, giving long speeches in a firm, clear voice.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee in Callao and Cassandra Garrison and Marco Aquino in Lima; additional reporting by Leila Miller in Buenos Aires and Lucinda Elliott in Montevideo; editing by Nick Zieminski, Rosalba O'Brien and John Mair)
