Pope says it’s a ‘joy’ to be home as Peru’s Chiclayo welcomes back its former shepherd

CHICLAYO, Peru (AP) — Pope Leo XIV returned Friday to his beloved former diocese of Chiclayo and said it was a “joy” to be home, an emotional return underscoring his love for his Peruvian flock and their pride that their shepherd now runs the Catholic Church.

The pontiff, known here as “Padre Roberto,” arrived at Chiclayo’s airport on the Pacific coast and immediately headed to a vast, dusty field outside Chiclayo for his first Mass on Peruvian soil. The Vatican estimated 1 million people had lined his motorcade route to the Mass and that 500,000 attended.

They cheered wildly when Leo arrived and looped through the crowd in his popemobile, under a scorching sun and temperatures of 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit).

“What a joy it is to return to Chiclayo!” Leo said. “It is a blessing for me to be with you once again,” he said, thanking the faithful especially for their prayers during his recent hospitalization for lung cancer. He declared that “with God’s help, I am overcoming” the health scare.

Chiclayo, population 700,000, is the commercial hub of Peru’s northern Pacific coast. But much of the world heard about it on the night of Leo’s election, May 8, 2025, when he gave Chiclayo a shoutout, in Spanish, from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica.

And on Friday, Chiclayo welcomed its former shepherd home.

“I’m elated. He has decided to return to Chiclayo and we have him here, with us — home,” said Julie Albujar, who woke before dawn with her sister to travel to the Mass site, where they were tasked with taking the collection. “This is a party and it’s a sign of our faith and our love for the pope.”

Beloved for being close to the poor

The former Robert Prevost spent two decades as a missionary priest and bishop in Peru and credits the place and its people with teaching him how to be a shepherd. Pope Francis sent the Chicago-born Augustinian to take over as bishop of Chiclayo in 2014 and he stayed until Francis summoned him to Rome in 2023 to run the Vatican’s bishops’ office.

In hindsight, the 2023 transfer to Rome signaled that Francis saw in Prevost a potential successor, since the job is one of the most important in the church and would give Prevost the Vatican experience that many consider necessary to be a viable contender for the papacy.

But Prevost’s heart is in Chiclayo, where he remains beloved for championing social justice issues and for his closeness to the people, especially poor people, during times of crisis. And he had quite a few during his tenure: COVID-19, devastating floods, and a surge of Venezuelan migrants as the humanitarian situation worsened there in 2018.

“I’m so glad he’s returning,” said Rolando Antonio Mendoza, who was selling posters bearing the pope’s image in front of the cathedral where Leo used to celebrate Mass. “Even though he’s now Pope Leo XIV, he hasn’t forgotten about his homeland.”

Nearby, the El Trébol proudly calls itself the pope’s restaurant, and his image is displayed in framed photos of Prevost riding a horse, wading through the mud in rubber boots and celebrating his birthday with a cake.

A sign on his favorite table — No. 3 — with a view of the cathedral reads: “mesa bendita” – Spanish for blessed table. Like many other places around the city, the restaurant sells “Papaletas” or “Pop(e)sicles” with Leo’s image in white chocolate.

Just a few steps from the restaurant, a life-size cardboard cutout of the pope now welcomes visitors to his former residence at the diocese, where an exhibit displays the amaranth purple, scarlet and white zucchettos, or skullcaps, that he wore as bishop, cardinal and now pope.

A giddy pope on his home turf

Ever since Leo touched down on Peruvian soil on Wednesday, the world has seen a very different pope.

Normally reserved and placid, the 71-year-old Leo has seemed at turns positively giddy and overwhelmed with emotion to the point of tears, as was the case on Friday.

Chiclayo seminarian Darwin Sánchez, who carried the pope’s miter during the Mass, said Leo greeted all the servers before Mass and was “very moved.”

“It was truly touching; thank God everything went well,” he said.

It wasn’t Sánchez’s first run-in with Leo. He recalled a Mass when, as a young altar boy, he mishandled the censer and passed it onto the man who was then bishop of Chiclayo.

After the service, Prevost took him aside and affectionately told him to be a bit more careful: Prevost had burned his hand when the chain fell into the hot charcoal, but he kept carrying it and didn’t complain or reprimand Sánchez in front of others.

“He’s approachable, happy and he gave me the strength and courage to follow my vocation,” Sánchez said.

As the Mass ended, the crowd erupted into a chant that reaffirmed their pride in calling the spiritual leader of more than 1.4 billion Catholics their own:

“El papa es Chiclayano!” they joyously yelled in Spanish: “The pope is Chiclayano.”

A prayer at a chapel dedicated to Romero

After Mass, Leo went to pray in a chapel dedicated to St. Oscar Romero, beloved among the working class and poor for defending them against repression by El Salvador’s army.

The chapel’s construction was spearheaded during Leo’s time as bishop, and its renovation was achieved through the efforts of the Rev. Edgar Rimaycuna, the pope’s personal secretary.

Leo’s decision to go there was perhaps symbolically significant.

When Prevost first arrived in Chiclayo, priests from the conservative Opus Dei movement had long had something of a monopoly on the diocese’s parishes, alienating the faithful who had a more social justice bent and who were particularly devoted to Romero, according to the new biography “American Pope,” by NPR reporters Daniel Burke and Scott Detrow.

While careful not to alienate the Opus priests, Prevost worked hard to try to bring about change in the diocese to make it less the clerical model used by Opus and more a model that empowers lay people and looks out especially for the poorest, they wrote.

It was a dynamic that Prevost had embraced in the diocese of Trujillo, Peru, where he worked as a young missionary priest, said the Rev. John Lydon, a fellow Augustinian who lived with Prevost in Trujillo in those years from 1990-1999.

He said many of the Augustinians in Peru at the time had a devotion to Romero, Prevost included.

“This was before he was canonized by Pope Francis, but we always referred to him in the house in Trujillo as Santo Oscar de las Americas,” Lydon said in an interview. “So we canonized him before the church.”

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AP writer Mauricio Savarese contributed from Lima.

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Luis Andres Henao And Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press