The Archbishop of Arequipa (Peru), Mons. Javier del Río Alba, expressed his joy for the election of Leo XIV, “the first Peruvian Pope in the history of the Church”, not only for his nationality but for “his identification with us, the Peruvians, whom he met from a very young age.”
In its weekly column entitled “The Peruvian Pope”, sent to ACI Press this Saturday, May 17, the Prelate explains that although Leo XIV was born in Chicago (United States) “in 2015 he requested, and was granted, the Peruvian nationality and has so far his DNI”, the National Identity Document that has everything Peruvian.
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“His request was not a merely formal act, but responded to his identification with us, the Peruvians, whom he met from a young age,” he emphasizes.
Pope León, recalls the archbishop, “arrived in Peru in 1985, with thirty years of age and three years of priest. Initially, the then P. Roberto, the faithful called him, was a missionary in the prelature of Chulucanas, in the north of our country.”
Then he was in Trujillo, also in the Peruvian North, for 11 years and then in Chicago where Agustino Provincial, to return to Chiclayo in 2014, where he was Apostolic Administrator and then Bishop. In 2023 Pope Francis sent him to the Vatican to serve as a prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.
Mons. Del Río states that “we can say that the Pope is Peruvian not only because he has our same nationality, but also because of the 42 years after his priestly ordination, 23 has passed them in Peru, which means that a good part of the formation and pastoral experience of the now successor of Peter has acquired them in Peruvian lands.”
With the experience in Peru and his years as a provincial prior and prior Agustino, in addition to his years under the command of a Vatican Dicastery, the now Pope Leo XIV “knows well the reality of the Church and of humanity globally. If we add to this we add their excellent training in science and mathematics, theology and canon law, we find a man with excellent formation and numerous human virtues, Christians and pastorals that today puts today.”
Therefore, the Arequipa Archbishop concludes, it is understood that the Pope has encouraged to build peace and that he has remembered the entire world that “God loves us all and that the world needs the light of Christ because the lack of faith often causes the loss of the meaning of life, the violation of the dignity of the person, the crisis of the family and so many more wounds.”
“Long life to the Peruvian Pope Leo XIV!”, Said the Peruvian prelate.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.