Pope Leo may be the world’s first American pope, but in his adopted nation of Peru – where he acquired citizenship in 2015 – he is a Chiclayano, a son of the bustling northern Peruvian city where he served as bishop for years.
“Papa! Amigo! El pueblo esta contigo!” congregants chanted in the crowd at a recent open-air mass in Chiclayo’s main plaza, blasting airhorns and lifting their children in the air as if it were a home team game.“Pope! Friend! The people are with you!"
Here, everyone seems to have a story about Leo.
Back in the 1980s, Nicanor Palacios was an altar boy with Leo during his early priesthood in nearby Piura, and traveled the area with him for services.
“It wasn’t hard for him to fit in. There was a small village back then, called Kilometer 50, on the Pan-American Highway. He’d take us there for dry meat and fried plantains. He liked that type of stuff and liked to go to the country. He’d eat just like a northern Peru farmer: yucca, fried fish, maybe a bite of fried meat," recalled Palacios, now an air force technician.
“What I liked most was his advice ... he was just a young man, 24 or 25 years old, but very serious and full of advice,” said Palacios, whose mother died when he was young and for whom Leo and the other altar boys become a second family, he says.
Many years later, as a bishop in Chiclayo, Leo’s accent in Spanish was still “very American,” according to local priest Emerson Lizana, 30, who remembers hearing his voice in the darkened confessional booth. But Leo’s presence still felt deeply familiar.
“The way he treated people, his presence enveloped you in a sense of trust. He had a Latin American heart,” Lizana said, describing how the then-bishop carried a cross through deserted streets during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Most say they never imagined that someone from this humble city could reach the highest seat in the Vatican. But with a Chiclayano pope, now anything is possible, said Friar Pipé, a local Augustinian monk from the same order as Leo.
“Let’s see,” Pipé joked. “When Benedict was the pope, Germany won the World Cup. Then Francis was the pope, and Argentina won … now, Robert is Pope, either Peru or the USA are going to win the World Cup.”
His time in Peru was not without criticism; three women allegedly abused by a local priest released a letter in September last year accusing Leo of failing to fully investigate their claims while he ran the church’s affairs in Chiclayo. The new pope has also been called upon by Catholics for Choice to change his views on abortion; a particularly sensitive issue in conservative Peru, where the procedure is illegal even in cases of rape and incest. An X account under Prevost’s name previously shared articles critical of reproductive rights and “gender ideology.”
Women’s rights advocates also told CNN they fear Leo’s appointment could now fuel religious conservatism in an already very Catholic country. According to a 2017 census, Peru’s population is 90% Christian and 76% Catholic – far more than in Leo’s native United States, where Catholics are under 20%. Chiclayo in particular is a city famous within Peru for the fervor of its faithful.
“We are very worried,” Liz Medrano, from the region’s Moshikas Diversas LGBTQI+ advocacy group, told CNN. “As you may have noticed, there is a lot of emotion in the province and in the region about the appointment of the pope who was from Chiclayo. Ultra-conservativism, fundamentalism, new movements can emerge from evangelical and Catholic roots,” she said.
Still, Leo’s reputed social progressivism in other areas -- including advocacy for the poor, for labor rights, and for migrants -- is seen as an overall “good direction” by many on the Peruvian left -- that is, at least for a pope.
“Of course we don’t expect that suddenly the pope goes out and defends the rights of women," said Rossina Vasquez, director of a local women’s rights group. "But perhaps he will take a position that is a bit more human and less stigmatizing.”
