Three weeks after lung-cancer surgery, Pope Leo XIV embarks on the longest and farthest journey of his pontificate: a 12-day tour of three Latin American nations with more personal and historical weight than any of his previous trips, Mediafax reports citing AP.

The US-born pontiff returns to Peru, where he lived for two decades as a missionary priest. He holds Peruvian citizenship and is so attached to the people there that he greeted them in Spanish from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on the night of his election.

Leo also goes to Argentina, homeland of his predecessor Pope Francis, to whom he owes the papacy. It will be a kind of homecoming there too: Francis never returned to Argentina after 2013, leaving a complicated legacy Leo must now manage.

The trip starts Friday in Uruguay — Latin America’s least Catholic and most secular country, where even major Catholic feasts lose their official names: Christmas is “Family Day” and Holy Week is “Tourism Week.”

Huge crowds are expected; issues central to his pontificate — economic injustice, indigenous peoples and the Amazon, and the church’s sexual-abuse legacy — are likely to surface. Many eyes will also be on Leo’s health after he confirmed such a gruelling itinerary so soon after the 13 October operation.

Doctors said he needs no further treatment and that there is no reason he cannot take the 6–17 November journey: multiple plane flights and two helicopter hops covering about 31,000 kilometres — the longest trip of his papacy.

Source: Pope Leo, recovering medically, returns to Latin America for a 12-day visit (Mediafax)