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LIMA, Peru (RNS) — The Peru that received Pope Leo XIV so enthusiastically Nov. 11 is not the same as the one where he served as a missionary priest and, later, bishop.
The country has had nine presidents in the past 10 years, four of them since 2023, when Pope Francis appointed him to a Vatican post. And although Peru’s macroeconomic figures have remained steady despite the political upheaval, it remains one of the Latin American countries with the greatest economic inequality.
“Right now, Peru is experiencing an intensification of the situation that existed when he left the country in 2023,” Peruvian Cardinal Pedro Barreto, a Jesuit, said in Spanish before the pope arrived. “Although he is familiar with the coast, the highlands and the Amazon region, he will encounter a country that is increasingly battered and dispirited, where people are wandering like sheep without a shepherd.”
Comparing the anticipation ahead of the pope’s visit with the crowds who sought out Jesus two millennia ago, he said Peruvians seek consolation amid a situation in which “they feel unsafe, unprotected, abandoned by institutions that are not responding effectively to violence, insecurity and the advance of organized crime.”
Most Peruvians rank crime and economic worries among their greatest concerns.
Nearly 7 in 10 Peruvians work in the informal sector, with no social benefits, often living on what they earn from day to day. Meanwhile, drug trafficking and extortion rackets are widespread in lower-income and working-class urban neighborhoods throughout the country. And corruption, increasingly bankrolled by organized crime, is a perennial issue.
Speaking to government officials, representatives of civil society and diplomats shortly after his arrival in Peru, Pope Leo XIV underscored the importance of strengthening democratic institutions.
“Democratic life brings together people of diverse convictions and aspirations, united by a shared national destiny,” he said, according to an official English translation of his Spanish remarks. “Institutions provide channels through which these differences can find expression and paths to understanding can be forged.”
In a veiled reference to Peru’s highly centralized government, he added, “Public decisions also affect those who live far from the places where they are made, and this should never be forgotten. To understand the needs of those who are far away, we must begin by listening to them.”
Like most of Latin America, Peru is politically split. In the results of the presidential election runoff on June 7, the two candidates, from opposite political poles, were separated by less than 1 percentage point. The winner, President Keiko Fujimori, who took office July 28, is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who oversaw a heavy-handed approach to political violence by armed groups that wracked the country in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The country has remained divided over his legacy, with some hailing him as a savior who ended the violence and stabilized the economy, while others fight legal battles for compensation for thousands of victims caught in the crossfire, most of them poor Indigenous Peruvians in rural areas. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission report in 2003 held the Maoist Shining Path responsible for unleashing the violence and committing most of the human rights violations but also called for justice for victims of abuses committed by the police and military.
In his remarks about challenges and hope for the future of Peru’s people on Thursday (Nov. 12) in the Plaza de Armas, which is flanked by the Cathedral and the presidential palace, the pope made little direct reference to some of Peruvians’ top concerns, such as income inequality, crime and corruption.
The initial proposal for the event included brief remarks by victims of the political violence of the 1980s and early 1990s and the police crackdown on protests in late 2022 and early 2023, as well as people from communities affected by pollution from mining, according to people familiar with the planning. But that lineup was replaced by people who briefly expressed to the pope their concerns about family life, cultural diversity, small businesses and the difficulties faced by women in low-income neighborhoods.
“The challenges you have mentioned cannot be addressed in isolation because the family, cultural diversity, the world of work and the condition of women are all part of the same human reality and are deeply interdependent,” the pope said in response. “The centrality of human dignity is the foundation for other essential principles that should guide personal, family, business and institutional decisions, such as the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity.”
The pope drew applause when he said that “God created the human person male and female,” and also when he continued by saying, “Nevertheless, living the truth of our identities as male and female does not justify an unequal sharing of domestic responsibilities or the subordination of one spouse to the other.”
He decried violence against women and girls, as well as racist attitudes and discrimination. He also urged his listeners to ensure that “wealth and resources of society are not directed exclusively toward the benefit of a few, but contribute to the development of all.”
Official figures put Peru’s poverty rate at 25.7% last year, although it neared 40% in rural areas; meanwhile, a recent study by aid organization Oxfam found that the wealth of the richest 0.1% of the population was 4,800 times that of the poorest 50%.
Since arriving in Peru, the pope has made only oblique references to political issues, usually in the context of bridge building.
In his homily during mid-morning prayer on Thursday (Nov. 12) with bishops, clergy, religious and lay pastoral workers, he said, “You have often heard me speak of the need to promote throughout the world ‘a peace that is unarmed and disarming.’ This is a genuine and urgent need, to which we must respond by cultivating, in every circumstance and day after day, the values of dialogue and fraternity, while avoiding every form of polarization that causes division.”
Meanwhile, in her remarks to him during his visit to the Presidential Palace shortly after arrival, President Fujimori struck a conciliatory tone. Calling national reconciliation “an urgent pending task,” she said, “We have experienced many decades of confrontation and distrust. As citizens, we must learn that discrepancies cannot turn us into enemies. We must learn to resolve them using democratic mechanisms, debate and institutions.”
The pope did not directly address human rights cases that have dragged on for decades or concerns that the new president could be following in her father’s authoritarian footsteps. However, after his speech about challenges, human rights activist Gisela Ortiz, whose brother was killed by a military-linked death squad, said his call for listening to people in distant places applied to those cases. Referring to Fujimori’s remarks, she said reconciliation must be accompanied by justice for victims.
In the past decade, legislators aligned with Fujimori’s Popular Force (Fuerza Popular) political party have gained a congressional majority. Additionally, a series of judicial appointments, laws and executive orders have opened the door to amnesty for members of security forces accused of human rights violations, as well as people who enforced policies that encouraged the sterilization of women, especially in rural and mainly Indigenous areas, without their informed consent, Tania Pariona said in Spanish. Pariona, a former Congressmember, is executive secretary of the National Human Rights Coordinating Committee, an umbrella organization of human rights groups, including many associated with the Catholic Church.
The government has prohibited non-governmental organizations from participating in lawsuits against the government, a move that Pariona, whose family fled their home community in the southern highland region of Ayacucho after soldiers killed at least 39 local Quechua residents in 1983, says will essentially stall efforts by people seeking redress in cases involving human rights violations, pollution and similar issues, especially those in rural and Indigenous communities who cannot afford private lawyers.
Because the polarization and weakening of institutions permeating Peru’s political life has also affected the church, the pope’s insistence that politics must be a forum for dialogue is aimed as much at the country’s bishops as its politicians, said theologian and historian Rolando Iberico of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. And even when the bishops speak with a unified voice, the church struggles to make itself heard above the cacophony of social media, he added.
“The church in Peru is very complex, with many different issues running through it,” Iberico said in Spanish. After Vatican II, the church in the southern Peruvian Andes coalesced around land reform and social justice. In recent years, Amazonian church jurisdictions have come together around care for creation and Indigenous rights, while jurisdictions on the coast have tended to be more independent, he added.
In his remarks to the Peruvian bishops at a morning meeting on Thursday (Nov. 12), Pope Leo, who also spoke of unity in diversity during his first full day in the country, compared the church’s role to the Qhapaq Ñan, the great network of roads that linked far–flung parts of the Inca Empire.
“Drawing on this image,” he said, “I would like to invite you to reflect on our episcopal mission, for the Church is like a path leading us to a communion and hope that crosses the mountains of indifference, the deserts of individualism and the distances that separate people.”