Pope Lectures Fujimori on 'Reconciliation' While Millions Cheer

Three million people filled Lima's main plaza on Wednesday to greet Pope Leo XIV, according to a Vatican statement, a record for his papacy. The 71-year-old, head of a church of 1.4 billion Catholics, landed at the Callao air base and was met by President Keiko Fujimori. The two spoke of "reconciliation." Only one of them has a father with a contested legacy from a brutal war.

Who Has the Power

Fujimori narrowly won her election earlier this year. Her father, Alberto Fujimori, led Peru through the turbulent 1990s and a brutal war against Maoist Shining Path rebels. Leo, in a closely watched speech, urged her to build confidence among her people and to confront the wounds of the country's turbulent past, alluding to her father's contested legacy. "Past events deserve to be treated with justice and sensitivity, leaving room for harmony to grow and for differences to be addressed with respect," he said. He also called on Peruvians to cultivate "honesty, integrity, and a willingness to engage with others," saying those qualities were essential to sustaining trust and democratic institutions.

Fujimori answered that the visit was an invitation to pursue Peru's "unfinished task" of national reconciliation. The word "unfinished" does heavy lifting there. When Alberto Fujimori was pardoned in 2017, nine years ago, then-Bishop Robert Prevost criticised the move, saying the former president should personally seek forgiveness from victims if Peru were to achieve genuine reconciliation. Now the bishop wears white, the president is the daughter, and the language has softened into speeches about harmony and sensitivity.

What They're Calling "Order"

The spectacle was built to scale. Peru put up a 14-metre (46ft) statue of the pope with outstretched arms in a seaside park in Callao. Lima's Wong parade returned after seven years. Merchants sold pope-themed shirts and souvenirs. The state and the church shared a stage, a popemobile and a motorcade through crowds lining central Lima. Nobody on that route got a vote on any of it.

What People Actually Did

The more telling stories come from Chiclayo, the northern city of about 700,000 where Leo served as bishop from 2015 to 2023, and where 20% of residents live in poverty. The people there don't talk about speeches. They talk about what got done when the institutions weren't showing up.

Rocio Zeña lost her home to flooding in 2023. "He was the first person who came with help and cared about us when everything was flooded and the water reached our necks," she said. Residents remember the bishop leading the purchase of oxygen production plants during the COVID-19 pandemic, wading through mud after torrential rains, and driving his pickup truck to remote villages to hand out blankets. Betania Marina Rodriguez, who lives in one of 13 homes built for Venezuelan migrants, said Leo delivered live chickens to her home during the pandemic to share with other migrants. "He always said that human dignity has no borders," she said.

In San Antonio, Daria Chavarry volunteers at a soup kitchen he inaugurated, now renamed "Papa Leon XIV." "He told immigrants at the time that we welcomed vulnerable people," she said.

The lesson Chiclayo teaches is uncomfortable for anyone who loves a hierarchy. When rivers overflowed in 2017 and hundreds lost their homes, and again when the water rose in 2023, help arrived through hands-on neighbor-to-neighbor effort, not through a ministry. Maria Teresa Santa Cruz, 78, paid 25 soles, about $3, in three installments for a T-shirt of Leo. That's what trust costs when the poor have little else to hold onto: an installment plan.

The Alternative

Prisoners at the Chiclayo penitentiary gathered at the carpentry workshop to carve a papal staff for him. "There's so much joy over his visit," said the Rev. Elmer Uchofen, the prison chaplain. People inside a cage built a gift with their own hands.

Leo said his return held "a very special meaning" and that he was "returning to my homeland." The Rev. Jasson Sempertegui, his former secretary, called it the most important moment in Chiclayo's history since Spanish Franciscan priests settled it in the 16th century as an Indigenous village. Read that sentence twice. The city's founding story is a colonial one, and its biggest day is another visit from the top of a hierarchy.

He will spend three days there, returning Friday. Millions in the plaza, 20% in poverty in Chiclayo, and a president promising an "unfinished task." The crowds went home with souvenirs.