Pope invited to Peru during bishops’ ad limina visit

Recalling his time as Bishop of Chiclayo in northern Peru from 2015 to 2023, Pope Leo told the Peruvian bishops that their country held ‘a special place in my heart’.

Peru’s ambassador to the Holy See invited Pope Leo to visit the country where he served as a missionary and a bishop during a ceremony in the Vatican gardens.

The Pope attended the unveiling of a mosaic of Our Lady and a statue dedicated to St Rose of Lima in the garden on Saturday and said of the artworks: “The two figures evoked – our heavenly Mother and the first Latin American Saint, Rose of Lima – lead us to the theme of holiness.”

Both were commissioned by the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference and made by “the Don Bosco Family of Artisans”, an association of young people based in the Peruvian Andes.

Pope Leo attended the unveiling with Peru’s new Ambassador to the Holy See Jorge Ponce Román, who voiced hopes that the Pope would visit Peru “very soon”.  

Bishop Carlos Enrique García Camader of Lurín, the president of the Peruvian bishops’ conference, was also present at the event, which coincided with the bishops’ ad limina visit to Rome.

During their audience with the Pope, he encouraged the bishops to live ad instar Apostolorum or “in the manner of the Apostles”. He said that meant to “become close to all those entrusted to us, taking an interest in them, sharing in their lives and their journey”.

Leo referred to St Turibius of Mogrovejo, a sixteenth-century Archbishop of Lima who is the patron saint of the Latin American Bishops’ Conference, which will celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of his canonisation this year.

The Pope said Peru’s bishops were “the fruit of the evangelical seed that this holy bishop sowed in those lands” and urged the Peruvian episcopate to model its ministry upon that of St Peter and St Paul, whom “became all things to all people” for the sake of the Gospel. 

Recalling his time as Bishop of Chiclayo in northern Peru, from 2015 to 2023, he said the country held “a special place in my heart”.

“There I shared with you joys and hardships, learned from the simple faith of your people, and experienced the strength of a Church that knows how to hope even amid trials,” he said.

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