CHICLAYO, Peru — Pope Leo XIV returned to his former diocese Nov. 13, where he received an ecstatic welcome and seemed equally moved to be back.
“What a joy it is to return to Chiclayo! It is a blessing for me to be with you once again,” Pope Leo said at the start of his homily at an open-air Mass in an arid plain outside the city.
Then he added a poignant reminder that, despite the hectic pace of his 12-day trip to South America — which has left him seemingly unfazed a week into the journey — he had cancer surgery only a month ago.
“Thank you for your affection, support and prayers, especially for my health during this time of trial which, with God’s help, I am overcoming,” the pope said.
Approximately one million people lined the pope’s route to the Mass site on the Pampas de Pimentel, and another 500,000 attended the liturgy, according to the Vatican.
Pope Leo served as bishop of Chiclayo for eight years, out of two decades in total as a missionary in Peru. He is the first foreign missionary in at least centuries to have been elected to the papacy.
But in his homily, he reminded his congregation that they were all called to evangelize.
“All Christians, whether ordained ministers or lay faithful — regardless of the degree of formation we have received in the faith — are missionary disciples,” the pope said.
For most laity, he said, the task of evangelization takes the form of “the witness of an authentically Christian and coherent life.”
The pope said achieving that life “is not merely the fruit of our own will, but it is also a grace for which we must implore the Lord and with which we are called to cooperate through our personal commitment and effort.”
Pope Leo said that good works are a necessary concomitant to evangelization, “because the proclamation of the faith is linked to charity and the care of those most in need.”
He also stressed that the welcome of the evangelist does not mean suspension of moral rigor, since Jesus “invites us to conform our lives to his in faithful obedience to his commandments.”
“Without truth, love degenerates into mere sentimentality, while truth without love becomes rigid and cold,” the pope said.
