By Joshua McElwee, Cassandra Garrison and Marco Aquino
LIMA, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Throngs of people were flooding Lima’s streets on Thursday as Pope Leo, the first Peruvian citizen to lead the Catholic Church, opened the second day of an emotional return visit home that has already broken crowd records.
Pilgrims, families and church groups had packed much of Lima’s historic center, effectively shut down as people lined streets for miles, pressing against police and security barriers as Leo toured in an open-air popemobile.
Leo is on the final and most personal leg of a three-country tour of South America. Originally from Chicago, the pope spent about 20 years as a missionary and bishop in Peru and holds US and Peruvian citizenship.
In a speech on arrival in the country on Wednesday, amid a record crowd of 3 million on Lima’s streets, the pope declared to wide applause at the Gran Teatro Nacional that he considered Peru his homeland.
Carmen Moreno, 78, wiped away tears after watching Leo’s popemobile pass by on Wednesday evening in Lima’s Plaza de Armas, where she had waited with her daughter for seven hours. She said his return felt deeply personal for Peruvians, who had embraced him long before he became pope.
“He is returning to the land where he became who he is,” Moreno said. “I feel so much joy seeing how much we, the Peruvian people, love him.”
POPE URGES FUJIMORI TO HEAL PERU’S WOUNDS
Leo on Wednesday also urged Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori to confront the wounds of the country’s turbulent past and rebuild trust among her people after her narrow victory in an election earlier this year marred by fraud accusations.
Moreno said her excitement for Leo was mixed with anxiety over violence in Peru, where crime has surged due to a combination of expanding organized crime and weakening state institutions.
She said she hoped Leo would pray for Peru and “for crime to subside”.
Leo is on one of the most intense foreign tours organized for a Catholic pope in decades, which started less than a month after he underwent surgery for lung cancer. The pope has seemed in good form throughout the trip, leading about five public events a day and giving long speeches in a firm, clear voice.
He has six events on Thursday, including a meeting with Peru’s bishops, a speech on the country’s future, and a prayer vigil with young people in the national soccer stadium.
On Friday, he is due to travel to the northern city of Chiclayo, where he served as bishop from 2015 to 2023, before continuing over the weekend to Cusco, in the Andes mountains, and the Amazonian city of Pucallpa.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee, Cassandra Garrison and Marco Aquino in Lima, additional reporting by Leila Miller, writing by Lucinda Elliott, editing by Alex Richardson)
