The mission: Pope Leo XIV in South America
Pope Leo XIV is set to begin his first South American trip as pope on Nov. 6, visiting Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru. The 11-day itinerary includes more than 40 events across 14 cities and towns, coming weeks after the pope’s lung cancer surgery. The visit to Peru is especially personal: Leo served there as a missionary and bishop for about 20 years and is a naturalized Peruvian citizen. The journey will highlight the pope’s missionary identity and the Church’s varied evangelization efforts, including outreach in highly secular Uruguay.
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Pope Leo XIV is set to begin his first post-election visit to South America on Nov. 6, a trip that will combine public worship, political meetings and charitable visits with a return to Peru, where he spent much of his priestly life and served as a bishop. The 11-day itinerary across Uruguay, Argentina and Peru will emphasize missionary outreach, popular devotion, local cultures and care for people on the margins. 1
Leo will spend five of the trip’s 11 days in Peru, including two in his former diocese of Chiclayo. He is a naturalized Peruvian citizen and spent nearly half of his 43 years as a priest in the country; he has described himself as a missionary and has said that proclaiming the Gospel wherever one is belongs to every Christian’s vocation. 1
The visit will come just over three weeks after the pope underwent surgery for lung cancer. Although his doctors have said he needs no further treatment, he is scheduled for more than 40 public and private events in 14 cities and towns, including Cusco, which is more than 11,000 feet above sea level. 1
The trip’s first stop, Uruguay, presents a particular challenge for the Catholic Church: more than half the population has no religious affiliation, and 28% are agnostic or atheist. The country’s official calendar also uses secular names for major Christian observances, including “Family Day” for Christmas and “Tourism Week” for Holy Week. 1
Uruguayan bishops describe the country as a mission field where the Gospel must be proclaimed broadly. Leo may also address the place of religious institutions in public life, as he did during his September visit to France, and is expected to criticize Uruguay’s recent legalization of euthanasia. 1
In Argentina, the visit will take place in the context of Pope Francis’s legacy. Leo has pledged to continue Francis’s synodality initiative, which seeks to give lay Catholics a greater voice in Church life; local teams working on synodality are expected to take part in meetings with the bishops of Argentina and Peru. 1
The itinerary also includes Marian shrines in all three countries: Our Lady of the Thirty-Three in Uruguay, Our Lady of Luján in Argentina and Our Lady of Peace in Peru. In Chiclayo, Leo will crown an image of the Immaculate Virgin; the article also notes the role of popular devotion in reaching communities where priests are scarce and Pentecostal churches are established. 1
The Peru visit will highlight inculturation—expressing Catholic teaching and worship through local cultures. Leo studied Quechua during his time in Peru and has a particular devotion to St. Turibius de Mogrovejo, the missionary and archbishop of Lima who promoted evangelization in Indigenous languages. Leo is scheduled to return to Zaña, where he prayed before a relic of the saint before his 2014 episcopal ordination, for a celebration marking 300 years since Turibius’s canonization. 1
The pope will visit Church-affiliated charitable institutions, including homes for disabled people near Buenos Aires and for abandoned elderly people in Lima. The Vatican has also said he will meet abuse victims; those meetings could include people connected with the Sodalitium case, whose victims Leo assisted when he was bishop of Chiclayo. 1
On his final full day in Peru, Leo is due to travel to Cusco to meet representatives of popular Catholic devotion at an Inca archaeological site, then go to the rainforest to meet missionaries and representatives of Amazonian Indigenous peoples and celebrate Mass. The visit will bring attention to remote communities and to the difficulties of providing the sacraments in the Amazon, an issue discussed at the 2019 Amazon Synod. 1
The Church’s missionary vocation persists amid secularization
The Church’s missionary vocation does not depend on society remaining religious or on the Church retaining cultural influence. It arises from Christ’s mission and from the Gospel’s claim to offer life to every person. Secularization changes the setting and may expose weaknesses in how the faith is handed on, but it does not cancel the Church’s task. It calls for discernment: distinguishing legitimate social independence from a worldview that treats God as irrelevant, and proclaiming the Gospel through credible witness as well as words.
Not every form of secularization is opposed to faith. Pope Francis distinguishes the legitimate effort to understand how the world works and to live responsibly in society from secularism, which excludes the Creator from human life and can make God seem unnecessary. He cautions that Christians should not mistake the loss of social power or prestige for the central problem; the deeper challenge is how cultural change shapes people’s understanding of life and how the faith is presented.
That distinction matters because a missionary response should not aim to restore a past social arrangement in which the Church held greater influence. Instead, the Church must recognize what people are experiencing and communicate the Gospel in ways they can genuinely encounter. Francis describes secularization as a challenge to pastoral imagination: an occasion to find new forms of spiritual life, renew priorities, and express the faith in ways suited to the present.
At the same time, secularization can weaken religious practice and the transmission of faith. A recent document of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith notes that this affects secularized societies with long Christian histories as well as communities where Christians are a minority. In both settings, the challenge is not merely to preserve a Christian social identity, but to foster a personal, conscious faith that can guide life.
The Church’s mission is not a strategy for regaining influence. John Paul II explains that it stems both from Christ’s command and from the life of God entrusted to the Church: the Gospel is a gift meant to be shared, not kept hidden. The Church proclaims it because it concerns the whole person—not only social or material wellbeing—and because people have a right to encounter the Christian message freely.
This also means mission is broader than the work of clergy, religious orders, or those sent overseas. John Paul II taught that the whole Christian community is responsible for evangelization, while particular missionary vocations serve this wider task. He likewise emphasized that Christians need to be renewed by the Gospel themselves if they are to proclaim it with freshness and conviction.
In a 1986 address, he applied that principle directly to secularization: the missionary effort belongs to the whole Church, and each baptized person is called to bear witness to the Gospel in everyday circumstances. The point is not that every Catholic must become a professional preacher, but that Christian life itself is meant to make the Gospel visible—in the family, at work, in public life, and in care for others.
Mission in a secular society requires clear proclamation, but not proclamation reduced to argument or slogans. Francis stresses the importance of witness:
“Yet this proclamation is not primarily a matter of words, but of a witness abounding with gratuitous love, for that is God’s way with us.”
Such witness gives credibility to what Christians say: a life marked by generosity, hope, trust, and concern for others can make the goodness of God more intelligible. Francis therefore calls for fresh forms of expression and pastoral priorities focused on the essentials, while insisting that the Gospel must still be proclaimed.
That witness also reaches beyond church settings. Pope Francis encouraged Catholics in a deeply secularized society to take part in public discussion, especially where human life is at stake, and to make God’s mercy visible through their presence and service. He connected this public engagement with dialogue, education, care for the poor, and the formation of young people in the faith. John Paul II similarly highlighted peace, young people, families, poverty, and immigrants as areas where Christian presence can bear witness to God’s love.
The manner of evangelization matters as much as its urgency. Francis says the Church spreads not by proselytism—that is, pressuring or manipulating people to convert—but by attraction, through the goodness of Christian life and an open invitation to encounter Christ. Mission respects human freedom; it seeks to offer the Gospel, not compel acceptance.
The persistence of the Church’s mission also requires attention to how faith is handed on. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith identifies the kerygma—the basic proclamation of the Gospel—as essential, and calls for forms of communication that can prepare people for an authentic encounter with that Good News. In particular, it notes the value of narrative rather than relying only on abstract concepts. This is not a change in the substance of the faith. It is an effort to express that faith in ways that reach people whose assumptions, habits, and cultural surroundings may differ from those of previous generations.
The Church, then, should neither deny the reality of secularization nor treat it as proof that mission has failed. The challenge is real: practice can erode, inherited Christian identity can become merely social, and the Gospel may be presented in forms that no longer speak clearly. But the Church’s mission remains grounded in Christ, and every baptized person has a part in it. The appropriate response is renewed formation, patient dialogue, public and personal witness, and a clear, free invitation to the life offered in Christ.