By Joshua McElwee and Lucinda Elliott
MONTEVIDEO, – Pope Leo on Saturday urged an estimated 40,000 people, many of whom waited overnight in the rain on the Uruguay-Argentina border for his visit, to bridge their differences as he toured a region marked by sharp political divisions. Leo, on an ambitious 12-day, three-country tour through November 17, travelled some 750 km back and forth from Montevideo to Paysandu, a riverside economic hub in Uruguay’s northwest, where crowds gathered in heavy rain that eased shortly before his arrival. Worshipper Mariano Méndez, 36, who travelled from Buenos Aires to see Leo, said the pope created “a very uplifting energy. POPE URGES REGIONAL COOPERATION The 71-year-old pontiff is making one of the most demanding foreign trips by a Catholic leader in decades less than a month after undergoing lung cancer surgery.
Because it is accessible to pilgrims across the region, he was the first pope to visit the city on the Uruguay River, chosen by the Vatican as the location for Leo’s first Mass in South America. The crowd in a sprawling park on the southern edge of the city erupted into cheers and blew loud horns as Leo toured in an open-top popemobile amid blustery winds. In his sermon, Leo drew inspiration from the nearby General Artigas International Bridge, which connects Uruguay and Argentina. “It is not difficult to imagine the benefits a bridge brings: openness, communication and exchange. “This is the vocation to which we are all called: to build bridges, strengthen bonds, unite, communicate. “The fact that he has come to visit Latin America truly fills your heart. Leo, the first US-born pope, is visiting Uruguay, one of Latin America’s more stable democracies, until Sunday on the first stop of a tour that will also take him to Argentina and Peru.
That is why it is so important to be builders of bridges!” he said. The Vatican has described the trip as a “homecoming” for Leo, who served as a missionary in Peru for decades and became a Peruvian citizen.
POPE TO VISIT TROUBLED MONTEVIDEO NEIGHBORHOOD Leo will lead several events on Saturday afternoon in Montevideo, including a night-time prayer vigil expected to draw some 60,000 young people. The pope, who has forcefully decried the direction of global leadership in recent months, is expected to address a range of issues facing the continent on the tour, including environmental destruction, arms trafficking and regional political instability. The pope will also head to Casavalle, a neighborhood on the northern outskirts of the capital scarred by violence and drug-related crime. Rev. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Pablo Coimbra, pastor of a church Leo will visit, told Reuters he hoped the pope would lift the spirits of a community that often feels overlooked. “It is an area forgotten by governments and institutions,” Coimbra said of the neighborhood, classified as a police “red” zone, where residents often hear gunfire amid territorial disputes between drug dealers. In his first address of the trip, given to Uruguay’s government on Friday afternoon, he urged South American countries to tackle regional issues together and set an example for international cooperation. Leo wraps up his Uruguay visit on Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoon he heads to Argentina, where he will give a speech to President Javier Milei, a libertarian seen as a close ally of US President Donald Trump, who lambasted Leo earlier this year after the pope criticized the Iran war.
