Peruvians flock to see Pope Leo XIV in city he served as bishop

A superstar welcome for Pope Leo. On Thursday, he met with Peru's youth at the National Stadium in Lima. His trip has enjoyed enormous popularity. 60,000 people attended the vigil inside the stadium and 300,000 celebrated the Pope outside, according to the Vatican. The fact that Pope Leo worked in Chiclayo and is very familiar with the issues here is truly a blessing, because I feel that God hears the cries of the Peruvian people who need to feel that God is with them. The US-born Pope Leo spent two decades as a missionary in Peru before being chosen to lead the world's 1.4 billion Catholics. Naturalized Peruvian, his emotional return to Peru is the last leg of his South American tour that has broken crowd records. There, he spoke about challenges facing a church and country he knows well, including violence against women and clergy sexual abuse. Leo met with six victims in Lima and discussed how the church can better listen to them and offer its support. He seemed very interested and he tried to demonstrate that he is committed to the cases, Not just the Soralicio cases, but in general to abuses within the church. and that he is working hard on it. This is something that stayed with me because he reiterated it and was very emphatic about it. He reiterated it and was very emphatic about it. Despite his undeniable effort to help repair the church's tarnished reputation after numerous sexual abuse scandals, for some it is still not enough. There are hundreds or thousands of victims whose voices are not being heard on this trip. We do not expect the Pope to listen to each and every one of them. That would be impossible. But we do expect him to listen at least to the representative victims who can speak on behalf of others. Unfortunately, despite all our requests, this hasn't happened. Thank you very much. Pope Leo's trip to Peru will wrap up on the 16th of November, culminating in a holy mass and a farewell ceremony before he heads back home.