The Holy See Press Office programme provides the 6–17 November dates and planned itinerary. Vatican News reports that the flight departed Rome at 7:05 a.m. on Nov. 6; the programme lists a 7 a.m. departure and a 4:30 p.m. scheduled arrival in Montevideo, so this report distinguishes departure from arrival. Reuters independently reports the trip’s scale and political context, and attributes information about Leo’s recent surgery and recovery to Vatican officials; no independent medical records were reviewed. An Associated Press page was not accessible to this check, so Reuters was used as the single accessible independent alternative. The bounded actual-event image search found Vatican Media’s departure photograph without published reuse terms and agency imagery presented for licensing. Those images are not used. The two selected photographs are archive context: Pope Leo in a popemobile in Rome on May 18, 2025, before the inauguration Mass, and an aerial view of Montevideo dated Nov. 28, 2017. Neither depicts the Nov. 6 trip. The lead is by Proinséas and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; the city photo is by Marcelo Campi and licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Both originals are retained under public/newsroom/source-originals/pope-leo-latin-america-20261106. The Pope image was retained at its original 1,110 × 1,481 dimensions, converted from JPEG to WebP at quality 84, and stripped of metadata. The city image was proportionally resized from 2,560 × 1,440 to 1,800 × 1,013 and converted to WebP at quality 84, with metadata stripped. Neither was cropped or retouched. Both images were decoded and visually inspected; attribution and share-alike terms are recorded with each asset.
A return begins in Uruguay
Pope Leo XIV departed Rome on Friday, Nov. 6, for a 12-day journey through Uruguay, Argentina and Peru. His first stop is Montevideo, where the official programme schedules an arrival ceremony and meetings with Uruguay’s president, government representatives, civil society and diplomats. Vatican News reported the aircraft left Rome’s Fiumicino airport at 7:05 a.m. local time.
The Holy See’s programme runs through Nov. 17. It takes Leo from Uruguay to Argentina on Nov. 8 and then to Peru on Nov. 11. Reuters reports the trip is a homecoming for the Chicago-born Pope, who spent decades as a missionary and pastor in Peru and later became a Peruvian citizen.
A public itinerary with political encounters
The visit combines religious events with meetings at the highest levels of government. In each country, the programme includes an address to authorities and civil society or a meeting with the president, alongside public Masses and encounters with local communities. Reuters describes the route as roughly 31,000 kilometres across 10 cities, with 36 planned speeches.
The journey also brings Leo into three distinct political settings. Reuters notes that no pope has visited Uruguay since 1988 or Argentina since 1987. In Buenos Aires, Leo is scheduled to meet President Javier Milei and speak to civil-society representatives. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told Reuters that speeches would address environmental destruction, arms trafficking and regional political instability.
Peru carries a personal and institutional weight
Peru is the longest leg of the trip and the place most closely tied to Leo’s pre-papal life. The itinerary includes Lima, his former diocese of Chiclayo, Cusco and Pucallpa, where the Vatican programme schedules a meeting with missionaries and representatives of Amazonian peoples. The journey follows earlier papal visits to the region: Pope Francis travelled to Peru in 2018, while Uruguay and Argentina have not received a papal visit for nearly four decades.
The visit comes about a month after Leo underwent lung surgery. Reuters reported that Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the Pope had recovered and would need no special precautions for the tour. Reuters also quoted medical experts who said the high-altitude parts of the Peru itinerary could make rest breaks useful; those comments are expert assessments, not a change to the published schedule. Vatican News said Leo would meet survivors of clergy sexual abuse during the journey, without giving details of the meetings.
Sources
4 references
- Holy See Press OfficeApostolic Journey of Pope Leo XIV to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru (6–17 November 2026) — ProgrammePrimary itinerary: dates, planned stops, official arrival, meetings and public events. · 2026-09-21
- Vatican NewsPope Leo departs for Apostolic Journey to Latin AmericaVatican News reports the aircraft departed Fiumicino at 7:05 a.m. Rome time and gives the day’s planned Montevideo programme. · 2026-11-06
- Reuters, republished by Investing.comPope Leo starts South America “homecoming” tour a month after lung surgeryIndependent report on the trip’s duration, travel scale, regional and political context, and the Vatican’s public account of the Pope’s recovery. · 2026-11-06
- Vatican NewsVatican presents Pope Leo’s Apostolic Journey to Latin AmericaPre-trip briefing covering themes, meetings with abuse survivors and country-by-country context. · 2026-11-03
