LUJÁN, Argentina (AP) — Pope Leo XIV closed an emotional and politically charged visit to Argentina on Wednesday with an appeal for unity and reconciliation, offering a parting message of hope to his predecessor’s polarized homeland.
Leo spent his final morning in Argentina ministering to inmates at a prison where the 1976-1983 military junta held political prisoners and covered up a massacre, before celebrating Mass at the national shrine, the Basilica of Our Lady of Luján. The Vatican estimated that around 2 million people turned out for the Mass, the latest of the record-setting crowds who have welcomed Leo on the first papal visit to Argentina in nearly four decades.
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After subtly pushing back against President Javier Milei’s austerity agenda for three days — defending the dignity of disabled people, the rights of workers and the church’s social justice teaching — Leo offered final words of consolation and peace.
“We are likewise called to receive God’s grace and to undergo processes of forgiveness and reconciliation that renew peace, hope and charity within us,” Leo told pilgrims at the Luján liturgy.
Leo closed his homily by echoing the apostle Peter’s words to a man disabled from birth, recasting the biblical miracle as a call to a battered nation: “Argentina, rise up and walk!”
Wearing vestments in the blue and white of the Argentine flag, Leo prayed to the Virgin of Luján to help Argentines “build bridges of charity and networks of solidarity” and to “inspire in them the desire to continue along paths of reconciliation, communion and mission.”
While the appeal was an uplifting finale, the emotional highlight of Leo’s South American trip is expected later Wednesday, when he returns to his adopted homeland of Peru.
A massive national party awaits the Chicago-born Leo, who spent more than two decades as a missionary priest and bishop in Peru and holds dual citizenship in the United States and Peru. He’s known to Peruvians as Padre Robert and is beloved for ministering to poor communities, especially in times of crisis.
For Argentines struggling to scrape by under Milei’s social spending cuts, Leo’s visit has resonated deeply, from his opening address urging Argentine officials to put people before the economy to his meetings with labor leaders and residents of a home for people with disabilities.
Many at the Mass said they hoped his preaching might temper the political rhetoric and polarization widely believed to have kept Pope Francis from returning home during his 12-year pontificate.
“They’re all very aggressive, starting with the president,” Natalia Bosco, a 42-year-old volunteer at the Mass, said of Argentine politicians. “We can’t tell our children, ‘Don’t insult others,’ and then see the president doing the same thing. I hope the pope’s message of unity doesn’t just fall on deaf ears.”
The Luján basilica, where Francis often celebrated Mass for pilgrims as archbishop of Buenos Aires, hosts one of Argentina’s largest displays of faith. Each October, pilgrims walk about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the capital and nearby towns to give thanks or make requests to the Virgin of Luján, a small statue of Mary venerated as Argentina’s patron saint. This year, despite persistent rain, more than 2.8 million people took part, a record for the shrine, municipal authorities said.
“I know it’s hard to move politicians,” said Enrique González, 47, who coordinates Hogar de Cristo addiction recovery centers in Argentina's Patagonia region and was on hand for the Mass. “But I think the pope strikes a chord on both sides, and that starts to change something.”
Leo opened his day at Devoto Prison, where Francis ministered for years as archbishop, celebrating Mass, visiting cellblocks that housed inmates with AIDS and washing prisoners’ feet in the annual Holy Thursday ritual.
In 1978, during Argentina’s military dictatorship, 65 inmates held on ordinary criminal charges died at Devoto in what became known as the Seventh Pavilion Massacre, which the junta covered up as a deadly riot. Last year, a federal court ruled that the inmates died in a fire that broke out as guards violently cracked down on prisoners and sentenced two former prison chiefs, both in their 90s, to 25 years.
The nearly century-old prison, its dank corridors lit by flickering fluorescent tubes, is now closing, and its more than 1,000 inmates are moving to a new penitentiary complex.
Wearing identical white uniform shirts, the 75 inmates chosen from prison religious programs sat in rows in the gymnasium, facing a stage bearing the flags of Argentina and the Holy See and a statue of the Virgin of Luján that Francis had given them. Guards stood at attention, some holding plastic riot shields.
After listening to inmates describe lives marked by drug addiction, crime and homelessness, Leo acknowledged the “troubling realities” they had faced — “the sense of omnipotence produced by drugs, the false power that comes from easy money, the cowardly sense of security that comes from inflicting violence upon the weakest, and the impunity that results from corruption.”
He urged them to see their time behind bars as a chance for redemption and reconciliation.
“This means that even amid the evil, pain and deepest failures you may have experienced or caused, your present circumstances can become an opportunity to begin your lives anew,” he said.
The pope made no mention of the prison’s dark history, but his words on impunity resonated in a building where the junta’s crimes went unpunished for nearly half a century.
The visit continued a tradition Leo inherited from Francis, who made prisons a fixture of his foreign trips to remind inmates they remain beloved children of God. Leo’s last such visit, to a prison in Equatorial Guinea, produced some of the most chilling moments of his young pontificate, when inmates were forced to sing and dance for him in pouring rain.
For Francis, that ministry began at Devoto, said the prison chaplain, the Rev. Matías De Martini.
“As pope, you’ll remember he sometimes said, ‘Whenever I walk into a prison, I always think, why them and not me?’” De Martini said. “Well, that’s what he always said here. Everything he talked about as pope, he lived in this prison.”
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DeBre contributed from Buenos Aires.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
