Pope to retrace missionary footsteps in Peru and finally visit Argentina in November

ROME -- ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV will retrace his steps as a missionary priest when he returns home to Peru in November in his longest trip to date that will also take him to Uruguay and Argentina, where his Argentine predecessor Pope Francis never returned.The Vatican on Monday published the detailed itinerary for Leo’s first visit to Latin America as pope. The Nov. 6-17 trip will be a homecoming for the U.S.-born pontiff who also has Peruvian citizenship and spent two decades there as a priest and bishop.As he showed during his four-nation Africa trip in April, the 71-year-old Leo has no qualms about covering vast distances and working late into the night when he’s on the road. In all, he’ll clock just over 31,000 kilometers (19,000 miles) of flight time during the trip, nearly double the 17,000 kms (10,000 miles) he traveled in Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea.The visit begins in Uruguay to put Leo in place to mark an important Catholic feast day Nov. 8, associated with the country’s patron saint, of Our Lady of the Thirty-Three. The small statue of the Madonna dates from the 18th century Jesuit missions in the area and currently is housed in the city of Florida, ...