SANTA CRUZ DE SUCCHABAMBA, Peru: Pope Leo XIV warned Saturday that the heartland of the ancient Inca Empire was “suffering,” as the remote, poverty-stricken communities he served as a missionary in Peru shrink dramatically.
The head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics flew by helicopter to the isolated town of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba in the Andes mountains — an area he visited on horseback when he lived in Peru as Robert Francis Prevost.
Despite undergoing cancer surgery just one month ago, the 71-year-old pope was determined to visit the town — which sits among green peaks at an altitude of over 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) — during his 12-day tour of South America.
Gathered in front of colorful murals of the pope, thousands of faithful in the streets of Santa Cruz cheered his arrival.
At an open-air Mass, the pontiff spoke with pleasure of returning to the “steep hills, ravines and fertile valleys, in a land with Andean roots, where the Inca Empire flourished and which is the cradle of a profound Christian faith.”
But the communities are now under threat, he said, acknowledging the “suffering of those who are forced to leave their homeland in search of a better future” in the major coastal cities, such as Lima and Trujillo.
