Follow-Up: Pope Leo to Cross Peru in One Day, Visiting Inca City Cusco and Amazon Gateway Pucallpa

Pope Leo will traverse the length of Peru on Sunday, November 15, the penultimate day of his South America tour, visiting Cusco, a southern Andes city that was once the center of the Inca Empire, and Pucallpa, an eastern gateway to the Amazon rainforest, according to Reuters.

Leo, the first Peruvian citizen to become pope, is on a return visit to his adopted home and will travel 2,270 km (1,410 miles) in 12 hours for four events in Cusco and Pucallpa. Church leaders hope the visits will allow more Peruvians to attend events with Leo, who has drawn the largest crowds of his papacy, some 12 million people, across his 12-day, three-nation tour.

Leo, originally from Chicago, lived for about 20 years in Peru as a missionary and holds US and Peruvian citizenship. He started Sunday's travels from Chiclayo, where he was bishop from 2015 to 2023, and will end the day in Lima, before leaving for Rome on Monday.

In Cusco, Leo will also visit an archaeological site at the esplanade of Saqsaywaman, an ancient Inca fortress 3,700 meters (12,139 ft) above sea level. In Pucallpa, home to the Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people, locals hope Leo's arrival will draw attention to poor living conditions. 'For us, the pope's arrival is a source of great joy, but it is also a great opportunity to make our demands, our grievances, and our problems heard,' said Cecilio Soria, an Indigenous human rights activist.

Church leaders also think Leo might address illegal logging in the Amazon, where gold mining has cleared some 140,000 hectares (540 square miles) of rainforest since 1984 and poisoned regional waterways, according to a 2025 report from the group Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project.

Source: Reuters

Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 图：秘鲁 Cusco 的 Saqsaywaman 印加要塞遗址（资料图）。摄影：Sarov702，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The Saqsaywaman Inca fortress site in Cusco, Peru (file photo). Photo by Sarov702, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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