Pope wraps up Uruguay visit and heads to most fraught stop of his tour in Milei's Argentina

Pope Leo XIV wrapped up his visit to Uruguay on Sunday by marking an important Catholic feast day that is tied to the country’s independence, capping his effort to draw attention to the role the church played in the founding of Latin America’s most secular country.

Leo traveled to the city of Florida, north of Montevideo, before heading to Argentina for the second leg of his three-nation tour of South America. It's expected to be the most politically delicate, given the Catholic Church's sharp criticisms of the austerity program of libertarian President Javier Milei.

For his final event in Uruguay, Leo was commemorating the feast of the Virgin of the Thirty-three. Every year, thousands of pilgrims flock to Florida on the second Sunday of every November to pray before the small wooden icon of the Virgin Mary housed there.

According to tradition, 33 independence patriots acquired the Guaraní statue and had it with them when independence was declared from the Brazilian empire in Florida on Aug. 25, 1825.

Leo became the first pope in nearly four decades to visit Uruguay, in hopes of reminding its people that the Catholic Church is part of their very identity as a nation — even if in subsequent decades the country went on a deeply secular, and at times anticlerical, route.

Thousands of people poured into Florida's main square on Sunday ahead of the Mass under brilliant blue skies, some walking for several kilometers (miles) to reach the site.

An assessment after the first leg of the trip

Leo was hoping to leave a parting message before opening the second leg of his South American trip, which he went ahead with despite having undergone surgery Oct. 13 to remove a cancerous tumor from his lung. The final stop is in Peru, his second homeland.

Leo, 71, has appeared in fine form at his events, singing loudly, bounding up stairs and gamely greeting the crowds in his popemobile. He has not cut any events short, including those that have kept him out until past midnight Rome time.

“This visit will also serve to reinforce the image of Leo as a leader, not merely in a spiritual sense, but in a much broader capacity as a political leader and a widely recognized figure who, far from shying away from conflict or tension, offers a powerful perspective and commands a highly respected voice,” said Luis Bahamondes, a professor at the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Chile.

A potentially delicate meeting with Milei

In Buenos Aires, Milei is due to greet Leo at the airport and then the two will appear together for the traditional welcome ceremony and exchange of speeches. The encounter could be tense, given the Catholic Church's criticism of Milei’s austerity measures that have slashed social spending, and his embrace of artificial intelligence.

Milei has staked his presidency on cutting social spending to overhaul Argentina’s troubled economy and deliver a long-elusive budget surplus. He has called social justice “an aberration” that amounts to stealing, and mocked as “huge stupidity” the increasingly common complaint in Argentina that families squeezed by his austerity program can’t make it to the end of the month.

Leo, who took his name from the 19th-century pope whose encyclical on labor laid the foundation of Catholic social teaching, has made the poor and vulnerable a focus of his papacy, carrying on the legacy of his Argentine predecessor, Pope Francis.

Posters reading “At last, a Lion who unites” appeared across Buenos Aires this weekend, a jab playing on the pope’s name in Spanish — León, or lion — and the lion imagery Milei often uses to portray himself on social media.

“Argentina is a society currently experiencing significant upheaval, deep polarization, and an economic crisis, along with a president who defies conventional protocol — a leader who, at one point, even challenged Pope Francis,” Bahamondes said.

The Argentine church is a sharp Milei critic

Since taking office in December 2023, Milei has slashed Argentina’s health care budget by 48% in real terms. Planned cuts to the public university system, which represents a near-universal point of pride in the crisis-prone country, sent students into the streets.

According to official data, poverty in Argentina reached 32.3% of the population during the first half of 2026, representing about 15 million people.

Much like its allies in the Trump administration, Milei's government has portrayed the cuts as part of a necessary reform process to remake Argentina’s troubled economy and eliminate fraud and waste in the federal bureaucracy.

Like Trump, Milei has also courted AI investment and data centers with promises of limited regulation. Leo has warned that the AI race poses threats to humanity and the environment and called for strict, internationally policed safeguards on its development.

Milei’s government insists the papal trip is purely religious. “The pope belongs to all Argentines. He doesn’t belong to a political party or a political camp,” Karina Milei, the president’s sister and secretary general of the presidency, told reporters after a recent planning meeting for Leo’s visit with church leaders.

A trip to complete Francis’ unfinished business

In Argentina, Leo is completing unfinished business left by his predecessor, Francis. The Argentine Jesuit, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, never returned home during his 12-year pontificate, confounding friends and foes alike.

“There’s a lot of disagreement over Francis and his legacy in Argentina,” said David Lantigua, a theology professor and faculty fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute, which focuses especially on Latin American affairs.

Much of the polemics stems from his tenure in Buenos Aires, when the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a sometimes divisive partisan figure in a politically polarized country. Bergoglio was a slum priest, who advocated for the poorest and most marginalized — the sector of Argentines feeling Milei’s social spending cuts the most.

“I think we’ll see that kind of tension with Leo — that’s the ministry Francis left behind,” Lantigua said.

Leo, who spent two decades as a missionary priest in Peru ministering to poor people, is very much a pastor in Francis' image and owes his pontificate to the late pope.

Argentina’s state intelligence agency said Saturday that a person had been arrested over death threats against Leo ahead of his visit to the country. A federal court in Campana, some 70 kilometers (45 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires, ordered the arrest less than 24 hours after the agency was tipped off, it said, without elaborating on the suspect or the nature of the threat.

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DeBre contributed from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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