A letter from Pope Leo XIV has come to light in which he expressed his desire to remain in Peru for the rest of his life
The documents, recently uncovered by TV Perú Noticias and preserved by Peru’s National Migration Archive, offer a rare glimpse into the personal convictions of a man who, a decade later, would become Bishop of Rome
about 2 months ago
A recently uncovered letter reveals that Pope Leo XIV expressed a personal wish to spend the remainder of his life in Peru, indicating a deep connection to the country he visited early in his papacy. 1
The document surfaced in late August 2026, shortly after being authenticated by Vatican archivists. Its emergence has prompted renewed interest in the Pope’s earlier travels to South America.
In the handwritten note, Leo XIV writes that he feels “a profound spiritual home” in Peru and hopes to “remain here, serving the faithful, for the rest of my days.” He cites the warmth of the Peruvian people and the country’s vibrant Catholic traditions as reasons for his desire.
Vatican officials have clarified that the Pope’s personal wish does not alter his responsibilities in Rome, but the letter underscores his ongoing commitment to the global Church, especially in Latin America. Local clergy in Peru have welcomed the sentiment, viewing it as a sign of continued papal support for the region’s pastoral needs.*
Examine papal residency norms during the 17th‑century missionary era
During the seventeenth-century missionary era, “papal residency norms” did not constitute one universal rule requiring every missionary to remain permanently in a mission territory. Rather, the popes regulated residence through a combination of obedience to religious superiors, subordination to local ecclesiastical authority, missionary necessity, and, in some institutes, explicit minimum terms of service. The norms differed according to whether the person was a religious missionary, a secular priest, an apostolic vicar, or a member of a missionary seminary.
The central principle was that missionaries were to remain where the Church’s missionary work required them, while their residence and ministry were subject to legitimate superiors and increasingly to apostolic vicars.
The basic expectation was that missionaries would remain in the territories assigned to them and exercise their ministry there rather than treating the mission as a temporary personal adventure. Urban VIII’s legislation describes missionaries as persons sent to the East “for the propagation of the faith” and permits religious superiors to send suitable members to India, Japan, China, and neighboring regions when necessity required it.
Once they arrived, missionaries were to remain under the obedience of their own religious superiors. At the same time, their preaching and sacramental ministry were subject to the bishop of the place:
“When they have arrived in the provinces and places assigned to them, they must remain subject to the obedience of their superiors according to their rules and constitutions; but in preaching and administering the sacraments they are subject to the bishop in whose diocese they preach and administer the sacraments.”
This produced a dual structure of authority:
Thus, residence was not understood as an autonomous right of the missionary or religious order. It was connected to a mission entrusted by the Church.
A major feature of the period was that many territories did not yet possess a stable diocesan structure. Missionaries therefore exercised pastoral functions in places where there were few or no resident bishops and where the ordinary hierarchy was separated from them by enormous distances.
A papal privilege granted Jesuit priests in remote regions the ability to preach, hear confessions, and celebrate Mass without repeatedly seeking new approval from a nearby bishop when that bishop was more than two days’ journey away. Where the bishop was within two days’ journey, however, the missionary was still required to obtain the necessary permission.
This reveals an important distinction: the absence of a resident bishop did not mean the absence of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Rather, the Holy See adapted the exercise of jurisdiction to missionary geography. Extraordinary faculties were granted because ordinary access to the bishop was practically impossible.
The same legislation permitted Mass on portable altars in suitable places when churches were unavailable and allowed missionaries in distant territories to use holy oils consecrated several years earlier. These permissions presupposed a missionary residence that was:
Residency therefore had a strongly functional character: missionaries stayed where the Christian population and evangelizing need required them.
During the seventeenth century, the Holy See increasingly appointed apostolic vicars to govern missionary territories. These were bishops or other ecclesiastical officials who exercised delegated papal authority in regions not yet organized as normal dioceses.
Clement IX explained that apostolic vicars had been appointed in China, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Siam, and neighboring territories chiefly so that indigenous Christians could be formed into clergy and priests and that ecclesiastical discipline could gradually be introduced.
The creation of apostolic vicariates changed the meaning of missionary residence. Missionaries were no longer simply representatives of their religious orders operating in an ecclesiastical vacuum. They were expected to work within a developing territorial structure headed by a papal representative.
Clement IX’s legislation addressed precisely the problem of independent missionary communities operating at a great distance from Rome. The pope warned that the independence of many missionaries could easily produce “dissensions” and conflicts, especially because the missions were so remote from the Holy See.
Accordingly, regular missionaries were required to:
This was a significant limitation on purely order-based residency. A religious order could send a missionary, but the missionary’s continued public ministry and institutional presence were increasingly subject to the apostolic vicar.
Clement IX’s norms also suggest that residence was not merely permitted; it could become an obligation of justice. Where secular priests were lacking, regular missionaries were required to undertake the care of souls:
“In the absence of secular priests, they are bound to undertake the care of souls not only by charity but also by justice.”
This language is important. The missionary’s presence was understood as a response to the objective needs of the faithful, not merely as an expression of personal zeal or religious preference. A missionary who refused necessary pastoral service could be compelled by the apostolic vicar to undertake it.
The norm also allowed apostolic vicars to multiply missionary personnel and divide parishes when the number of neophytes or the size of a territory made existing personnel insufficient. Residence was therefore governed by pastoral proportionality: missionaries were to be deployed according to the number of Christians and the geographical extent of the mission.
The clearest fixed residency norm in the supplied sources concerns Franciscan missionaries. A Franciscan missionary who had completed ten years of laudable missionary service could request permission to return to his own province. The seminary guardian and discretory were not permitted to refuse the necessary permission or testimonial, and the provincial was obliged to receive him.
The testimonial was significant. It had to attest to the missionary’s zeal and commendable progress in the missions. A missionary who returned before completing ten years, or without the required testimonial, incurred serious penalties, unless an incurable illness justified the return.
This arrangement indicates several principles:
The ten-year term was not presented as a general papal rule for all missionaries. It belonged to a particular Franciscan regulatory framework. Its purpose was to prevent missionaries from abandoning the mission prematurely while still recognizing that a return to the home province could eventually be legitimate.
The missionary could not simply decide to leave. Permission and documentary evidence of faithful service were required. The rule protected the mission from instability and gave superiors a means of distinguishing genuine necessity from personal convenience.
The legislation expressly exempted a missionary who returned because of incurable illness from the penalties attached to premature departure. This demonstrates that the norms were disciplinary rather than mechanically absolute.
After holding certain offices, such as visitor, reformer, or provincial minister, the missionary was required to return to his own seminary and was forbidden to establish a domicile in the mission province without a legitimate cause approved by the Holy See. He was also required to depart within four months after completing the office unless a legitimate reason existed.
The concern was to prevent missionaries from becoming detached from their religious province or acquiring a quasi-independent personal power base in the mission territory.
Papal legislation also regulated not only how long missionaries stayed, but whether they could enter or leave a mission at all.
Gregory XIII had prohibited clergy from going to China and Japan for missionary work without the express permission of the Holy See. The prohibition applied broadly to bishops, secular priests, and religious clergy.
Later popes modified this policy because the missions were vast and required more personnel than the Jesuits alone could provide. Clement VIII therefore allowed the superiors of mendicant orders to send suitable missionaries to the East, initially through Portuguese channels. Paul V subsequently permitted travel by routes other than Portugal, and Urban VIII confirmed and expanded the arrangement.
This development shows that papal residency norms were responsive to missionary realities. The Holy See moved from strict centralized control over entry toward broader authorization of missionary mobility, while preserving the requirement that missionaries be selected and sent by legitimate superiors.
By the early eighteenth century, the principle of prior papal authorization was again being strongly enforced in China. Missionaries who entered or left the mission without the required written license incurred suspension from the exercise of sacred functions. Those who assumed offices of authority among missionaries without papal consent could have their acts declared invalid and their subordinates released from obedience to them. Although this legislation is dated 1716, it represents the culmination of seventeenth-century concerns about unauthorized mobility and fragmented authority.
The papal documents repeatedly seek to prevent competing missionary bodies from creating rival ecclesiastical structures. Clement IX required regular missionaries to submit to the apostolic vicars in pastoral matters and prohibited them from opening churches where another missionary church already existed without permission.
This was particularly important because the missionary field included Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, secular priests, and later other religious congregations. The historical sources describe rivalry among nations and religious orders in Japan, China, and India. In Japan, the initial Jesuit predominance was later challenged by Spanish Dominicans and Franciscans; papal policy gradually relaxed earlier restrictions on the participation of other orders.
The issue was not simply administrative. Rival residences could produce:
The papal legislation therefore treated orderly residence as part of evangelization itself. Missionary disputes could undermine the credibility of the Gospel. Clement VIII explicitly required superiors to organize missions so that they would be fruitful and free from contention that might deter non-Christians from conversion or scandalize converts.
The supplied sources do not present a general seventeenth-century papal norm comparable to the later canonical rules requiring diocesan bishops to reside in their dioceses. They focus instead on missionary residence, apostolic-vicar governance, and religious obedience.
The apostolic vicars themselves were appointed to particular missionary territories and were expected to provide stable governance over those regions. Their role included forming indigenous clergy, introducing ecclesiastical discipline, supervising missionaries, multiplying workers, and resolving disputes.
But the sources do not establish a single numerical residency requirement for apostolic vicars. Their residence appears principally from the fact that they were “constituted” and assigned to specific kingdoms and provinces, not from a universal term of years.
The seventeenth-century norms can be summarized as a movement from order-based and mission-based autonomy toward more coherent territorial governance.
At the beginning of the period, missionary residence was shaped by:
As the century progressed, the Holy See increasingly emphasized:
The Franciscan ten-year rule illustrates a fixed institutional term, but it should not be generalized to all missionaries. The broader papal policy was not “every missionary must remain for a specified number of years,” but rather: a missionary must remain faithfully in the mission entrusted to him until legitimate ecclesiastical authority authorizes his transfer or return.
Papal residency norms in the seventeenth-century missionary era were principally norms of stability, obedience, jurisdiction, and pastoral necessity. Missionaries were expected to remain where their service was needed, to obey their religious superiors in internal matters, and to submit to bishops or apostolic vicars in public ministry. Specific institutes could impose minimum terms—most clearly, the Franciscan ten-year rule—but no single universal duration governed all missionary residence.
The long-term ecclesiological development was toward the integration of religious missionaries into a territorial structure governed by apostolic vicars and, eventually, by indigenous clergy and ordinary diocesan institutions.