Pope Leo urges nonviolence in Peru’s Andes

Pope Leo XIV urged Peruvians to reject brutality and spoke of villages emptied by migration on Saturday, returning to a remote Andean town he visited regularly when he was a bishop.

About 20,000 people gathered for an outdoor Mass in Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, a town of roughly 6,000, according to the Vatican. Some had travelled from across the region to see the pope, who arrived by helicopter to singing and cheers before waving to crowds from a popemobile.

“Selfishness, injustice and evil are not overcome by brutality, but by prayer, patience and perseverance in denouncing what is wrong, by making our pleas with determination and working diligently to bring about the necessary changes,” Leo said at the Mass.

Earlier, speaking at his former cathedral in Chiclayo, he addressed the violence affecting Peru. “We feel threatened by the uncertainty of widespread violence and by the unspeakable suffering that continues to afflict so many of our brothers and sisters,” he said.

Peru’s homicide rate has nearly doubled in five years, rising from 5.8 to 10.7 per 100,000 people. Reported extortion cases increased from 2,421 in 2019 to 26,734 in 2025, according to official figures cited by The Associated Press and reported by Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera reported that President Keiko Fujimori, who took office in July after promising to tackle crime, has declared states of emergency in Lima and in prisons holding inmates linked to criminal organisations.

At the Mass, Leo also described pressures on the rural communities he once served. “Let us think, for example, of the suffering of those who are forced to leave their homeland in search of a better future for themselves and their families in the great coastal cities,” he said. He spoke of declining birth rates emptying villages and the unequal distribution of the land’s resources, while thanking those who had made the journey to see him and urging them not to lose heart.

Santa Cruz lies in the Cajamarca region, where more than 40% of residents live in poverty, the highest rate in Peru, according to official data cited by the BBC. The BBC also reported that 729,000 people born in Cajamarca now live elsewhere in Peru, the country’s largest such loss to internal migration.

Leo served as bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023 and visited Santa Cruz several times a year. At a local parish on Saturday, he spoke of the joy of returning. “It is like a very big dream that the Lord has allowed this servant to come here,” he said.

The Rev. Kevin Noriega, whom Leo ordained in 2018, told Reuters the visit had brought “enormous hope and emotion” to Santa Cruz. People were eager to see “their bishop — ‘Father Robert,’ as they used to call him — now as the Holy Father,” he said.

The US-born pope became a Peruvian citizen in 2015. Peru is the longest stop on his first Latin American tour since his election in May 2025. He is due to travel to Cusco and the Amazon region on Sunday before returning to Rome on Monday.