Jubilant Peruvians celebrate new pope at mass in adoptive city
Thousands of Catholics gathered on Saturday for an outdoor mass in the Peruvian city of Chiclayo to celebrate the election of Pope Leo XIV, who for years lived, ate and prayed among them.
The first American head of the Catholic Church spent nine years in the commercial hub along the Pacific coast, where he is claimed as one of their own.
Chiclayo "is a simple town that he loved deeply and that he continues to carry in his heart," Chiclayo Bishop Edinson Farfan told a packed congregation at St Mary's Cathedral.
Pope Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, first set foot in Peru four decades ago as a missionary.
He returned to the city in 2014 and the following year was named bishop, becoming a naturalized Peruvian citizen in the process.
He remained there until he was summoned to Rome by his predecessor, the late pope Francis, in 2023.
In his first address from the Vatican on Thursday, Leo briefly greeted his "beloved diocese of Chiclayo" in Spanish and paid homage to his "faithful people."
Seven thousand miles away, many in the city could hardly believe "el obispo" is the new pope.
"There are no words to explain the emotion, the feeling that our pope has been here, close to us," said Rosa Maria Bernadese, a 57-year-old teaching assistant, who joined the celebration at St Mary's Cathedral.
Amid a sea of yellow balloons, some faithful waved pictures from Leo's time as a bishop. One held a sign that read: "Papa Leo XIV, Chiclayo will always be your home".
"Papa amigo, Chiclayo esta contigo (Pope, my friend, Chiclayo is with you)," they chanted as applause broke out.
Bishop Farfan described Leo as "deeply sensitive to social justice" and praised his "big heart" and closeness to the poor, migrants, refugees and "those who suffer."
"The city of friendship, the city of the Eucharist, accompanied the Holy Father Leo XIV in his pilgrimage so that he may now accompany and guide the universal Church from Chiclayo, from Latin America, the continent of hope for the whole world," he added.
From the front row of the mass, Maria Elena Laboriano, 45, said: "We are very happy that the current pope is a Chiclayan."
Others expressed joy that the pope has cast an international spotlight on Chiclayo, where they hope he will return.
"For sure, we will extend an invitation for him to come and visit us," Farfan said.
sf/cms/lb
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Zelenskyy says he regrets that Oval Office blowup, but he's still pushing Trump
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he regrets that his Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump in late February spun out of control, but explained that it was his impatience to reach "concrete decisions" during wartime that led to the blowup. 'We simply don't have that much time in our lives. I wanted concrete decisions,' Zelenskyy said on Wednesday in an interview in Odessa with the Axel Springer Global Reporters network, which includes POLITICO. 'We were unable to make certain decisions, extremely important decisions. I don't know whether America was ready to address these issues or not. I have to resolve this issue of war. You see, time is very precious. Not my personal time, but the time of my country.' Zelenskyy also said he liked his one-on-one meeting with Trump, held two months later on the sidelines of Pope Francis' funeral at The Vatican, much 'better' than his ill-fated visit to the White House. 'We were able to discuss much more than at the other meeting, which felt like it lasted a lifetime,' Zelenskyy said, describing Trump as 'friendly.' Ukraine's embattled president, whose assertiveness and persistent requests for additional aid also privately irked President Joe Biden and his top aides, has worked assiduously to improve his relationship with Trump since that fateful February encounter. And the two countries did eventually sign the economic agreement to jointly develop Ukraine's rare earth minerals once the war is over, a pact that was temporarily tabled when the White House visit went sideways. Yet he also suggested in the interview that even his war-torn country may be able to turn the war into a new phase. 'Relations between our countries are not entirely balanced, but that was in the past,' Zelenskyy said. 'And today we must do everything we can to ensure that the next meeting in the Oval Office is successful for both countries. The lives of many people depend on it. And peace depends on it. Many countries in Europe depend on whether there will be security and peace in Ukraine. The security and stability of many countries in Europe depend on it.' After months of trying to browbeat Ukraine into negotiating a peace deal that would have required them to permanently cede occupied territory to Russia, Trump is showing a new willingness to allow the war to continue. That's seemingly a response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's refusal to seriously engage in peace talks. With Trump possibly rethinking his approach, Zelenskyy pushed the White House to maintain a sense of urgency and increase its pressure on Moscow. 'It's important to impose sanctions. We shouldn't... play by Putin's rules. It is important to impose sanctions and force Putin to agree to a ceasefire so that we can talk about ending the war,' Zelenskyy said. He will have a chance to make another direct appeal to Trump next week when he is scheduled to attend the G-7 leader's summit in the Canadian Rockies. Trump, during a meeting last week with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, expressed hesitation about giving the Senate a green light to advance widely supported legislation to impose additional sanctions on Russia. Describing the proposal in its original form as 'very harsh' on Russia, the president has been privately skeptical about the effectiveness of sanctions and, for months, has believed taking a harder stance toward Putin would backfire. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But with the Russian leader unwilling to make any substantive concessions toward a ceasefire while stepping up his bombings of Ukrainian cities, Trump appears to be shifting course away from his push for peace and tempering his hopes for a fast rapprochement with Putin. In Wednesday's interview, Zelenskyy said Trump remains the key figure who can bring the war to an end and urged the president to allow the sanctions bill to move forward. 'The strength of the sanctions, how strong the sanctions package will be, depends on him,' Zelenskyy said. 'The speed with which decisions are made depends on him; we don't see any resistance from the senators, for example. On the contrary, the majority is in favor.' Trump, during the meeting with Merz, said the timeline for when he'll have to toughen up with Putin is 'in my head' — a statement that Zelenskyy said gave him hope that the stronger pressure he's asking for from the U.S. will eventually come. 'I very much hope that President Trump will stick to it,' Zelenskyy said. 'It's not even about the fact that he promised during the election campaign that he would end the war. That's not the point. It's more that he is a certain person — and let's also consider his age — and I think it's important for him, I hope it's important for him to end the war. He has spoken about it very often, he has repeated many times that he will end the killing.' Zelenskyy also spoke about Operation Spider Web, the clandestine and ultimately successful endeavor to sneak drones into Russia that earlier this month succeeded in taking out roughly a third of Putin's long-range bomber fleet. Trump, whose aides said he did not get a heads up about the attack, expressed only mild frustration over the attack and stated that Putin, in a call last week, told him that he planned to retaliate soon. The attack, Zelenskyy said, ushered the war into 'a new phase,' suggesting that Kyiv is also capable of escalation if the fledgling peace talks run aground. 'I think that both in the U.S. and everywhere else, we must do everything we can to end this war so that we do not have further phases in this war.'
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Wall Street Journal
Tanzania's First Female Leader Championed Human Rights. Now She's Turning to Repression.
Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania's first female president, came to power as a renowned defender of human rights. She is clinging to it, critics say, by locking up and torturing those who stand in her way. In recent months, Hassan's government has orchestrated abductions and killings of several political rivals, rights groups say. A senior opposition leader was found dead—beaten and doused with acid—after being abducted by security agents, according to his political party. Authorities closed a top newspaper, which had published stories about his death. A Catholic priest is battling for his life after surviving a brutal beating by unknown assailants as he returned from a conference where he made remarks critical of the government.
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
How the Vatican manages money and where Pope Leo XIV might find more
VATICAN CITY — The world's smallest country has a big budget problem. The Vatican doesn't tax its residents or issue bonds. It primarily finances the Catholic Church's central government through donations that have been plunging, ticket sales for the Vatican Museums, as well as income from investments and an underperforming real estate portfolio. The last year the Holy See published a consolidated budget, in 2022, it projected $878 million, with the bulk paying for embassies around the world and Vatican media operations. In recent years, it hasn't been able to cover costs. That leaves Pope Leo XIV facing challenges to drum up the funds needed to pull his city-state out of the red. Anyone can donate money to the Vatican, but the regular sources come in two main forms. Canon law requires bishops around the world to pay an annual fee, with amounts varying and at bishops' discretion 'according to the resources of their dioceses.' U.S. bishops contributed over one-third of the $22 million collected annually under the provision from 2021-2023, according to Vatican data. The other main source of annual donations is more well-known to ordinary Catholics: Peter's Pence, a special collection usually taken on the last Sunday of June. From 2021-2023, individual Catholics in the U.S. gave an average $27 million (23.7 million euros) to Peter's Pence, more than half the global total. American generosity hasn't prevented overall Peter's Pence contributions from cratering. After hitting a high of $101 million in 2006, contributions hovered around $75 million during the 2010's then tanked to $47 million during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many churches were closed. Donations remained low in the following years, amid revelations of the Vatican's bungled investment in a London property, a former Harrod's warehouse that it hoped to develop into luxury apartments. The scandal and ensuing trial confirmed that the vast majority of Peter's Pence contributions had funded the Holy See's budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe. Peter's Pence donations rose slightly in 2023 and Vatican officials expect more growth going forward, in part because there has traditionally been a bump immediately after papal elections. The Vatican bank and the city state's governorate, which controls the museums, also make annual contributions to the pope. As recently as a decade ago, the bank gave the pope around $62.7 million a year to help with the budget. But the amounts have dwindled; the bank gave nothing specifically to the pope in 2023, despite registering a net profit of $34.2 million, according to its financial statements. The governorate's giving has likewise dropped off. Some Vatican officials ask how the Holy See can credibly ask donors to be more generous when its own institutions are holding back. Leo will need to attract donations from outside the U.S., no small task given the different culture of philanthropy, said the Rev. Robert Gahl, director of the Church Management Program at Catholic University of America's business school. He noted that in Europe there is much less of a tradition (and tax advantage) of individual philanthropy, with corporations and government entities doing most of the donating or allocating designated tax dollars. Even more important is leaving behind the 'mendicant mentality' of fundraising to address a particular problem, and instead encouraging Catholics to invest in the church as a project, he said. Speaking right after Leo's installation ceremony in St. Peter's Square, which drew around 200,000 people, Gahl asked: 'Don't you think there were a lot of people there that would have loved to contribute to that and to the pontificate?' In the U.S., donation baskets are passed around at every Sunday Mass. Not so at the Vatican. The Vatican has 4,249 properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value, according to the annual report from the APSA patrimony office, which manages them. Some 70% generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 10% are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees. In 2023, these properties only generated $39.9 million in profit. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue. But Ward Fitzgerald, the president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, which finances papal charities, said the Vatican should also be willing to sell properties, especially those too expensive to maintain. Many bishops are wrestling with similar downsizing questions as the number of church-going Catholics in parts of the U.S. and Europe shrinks and once-full churches stand empty. Toward that end, the Vatican recently sold the property housing its embassy in Tokyo's high-end Sanbancho neighborhood, near the Imperial Palace, to a developer building a 13-story apartment complex, according to the Kensetsu News trade journal. Yet there has long been institutional reluctance to part with even money-losing properties. Witness the Vatican announcement in 2021 that the cash-strapped Fatebenefratelli Catholic hospital in Rome, run by a religious order, would not be sold. Pope Francis simultaneously created a Vatican fundraising foundation to keep it and other Catholic hospitals afloat. 'They have to come to grips with the fact that they own so much real estate that is not serving the mission of the church,' said Fitzgerald, who built a career in real estate private equity.
