Pope Leo XIV on Sunday will traverse the length of Peru in what marks the penultimate day of his Latin American tour. The leader of the Catholic church – who underwent cancer surgery just a month ago – warned that Peru's remote Inca communities are under threat as poverty continues to drive locals out of their homeland in search of better futures.
Pope Leo XIV warned that the heartland of the ancient Inca Empire is "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 metres (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…
%20(1).jpg)
