FACTBOX-A history of papal visits to Latin America

Pope Leo visits Uruguay, Argentina and Peru from November 6 to 17, returning to the world’s most ​Catholic region, where he lived for decades as a missionary and later became a Peruvian ​citizen. Covering 10 cities, the journey ranks among the most demanding ‌overseas trips ​by a Catholic leader in decades.

Here is a history of papal visits to Latin America. POPE PAUL VI (1963 to 1978)

Paul VI made the first papal trip to Latin America in 1968, touching down in Colombia for the International Eucharistic Congress and to inaugurate the Second General Conference of Latin American ‌Bishops in Bogota. Paul did not return to Latin America. He was the first pope to travel abroad in the modern era and had to stop after 1970 due to health issues. POPE JOHN PAUL II (1978 to 2005)

John Paul II visited Latin America more than any other pope throughout his quarter century as pontiff, making 18 trips. Mexico was his most frequent destination, with five visits. He traveled to Brazil four times.

His ‌first journey took him to the Dominican Republic and Mexico in 1979, signaling the importance he would place on Latin America. Over the following two decades, he crisscrossed the region, often drawing vast ‌crowds and weighing in on political upheavals, conflicts and democratic transitions. One of his most memorable visits came in 1982, when he made a hastily arranged 30-hour trip to Argentina after a visit to Britain during the Falklands War, amid concerns from advisers that the appearance could hurt his standing in Latin America. He returned in 1987, visiting Argentina, Uruguay and Chile as many countries in the region were emerging from military rule.

John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998 and Mexico in 2002, where he canonized ⁠Juan Diego, the ​Indigenous man said to have seen the Virgin of ⁠Guadalupe in 1531. The Virgin is central to Mexican faith and identity. POPE BENEDICT XVI (2005 to 2013)

Benedict, by contrast, made just two trips to Latin America: to Brazil in 2007 and to Mexico and Cuba in 2012. Benedict, who served as the ⁠Vatican's top doctrinal official for decades before becoming pope, was criticized as being out of touch with reality during his Brazil visit, where he defended the Catholic Church's teachings against premarital sex, artificial contraception and abortion.

An outdoor Mass with Benedict ​in Mexico in 2012 attracted crowds of some 600,000 people as the German-born pope decried cartel violence in the country. POPE FRANCIS (2013 to 2025)

Argentina-born Francis, the first pope from the Americas, began ⁠his travels in the region with World Youth Day in Brazil in 2013. Two years later, he visited Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, followed by a separate trip to Cuba. During a stopover in Havana en route to Mexico in 2016, Francis and Patriarch Kirill, head ⁠of ​the Russian Orthodox Church, signed a joint declaration for peace in a VIP lounge at José Martí International Airport. The encounter marked the first meeting between a pope and a Moscow patriarch, the top-ranking figure of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Argentine pontiff visited Colombia in 2017. His final trip to South America came in 2018, when he traveled to Peru and Chile. Despite repeated invitations from successive presidents, Francis never ⁠returned to Argentina during his 12-year papacy.

POPE LEO (2025 to present) Leo will become the second pope to visit Argentina and Uruguay after John Paul II in the late 1980s.

Peru marks a homecoming: ⁠he arrived as a missionary in 1985 and obtained Peruvian ⁠citizenship three decades later. The full itinerary spans Montevideo, Paysandu and Florida in Uruguay; Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Lujan in Argentina; and Lima, Chiclayo, Cusco and Pucallpa in Peru. He will address the governments in each country in closely watched speeches.

Leo was diagnosed in mid-October with a common form of lung cancer and ‌surgeons removed a lobe of ‌his right lung. His doctors later said he was fit enough to travel.