A statue of Pope Leo XIV is installed in a park overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the Peruvian port city of Callao. (EPA Images pic)LIMA: Before Pope Leo reaches Peru later this week, a larger-than-life version is already waiting for him on the Pacific shore. A towering white statue of the pontiff, arms stretched wide, was inaugurated on Monday ahead of Leo's final and most personal leg of his South American tour.
The 14-metre (46-foot) monument stands in Callao, a port city adjoining Lima, and is billed by its municipality as the world's tallest sculpture of a pope. It depicts the first US-born pope in flowing white robes in a country that has embraced him as one of its own.
Leo’s arrival in Peru on Wednesday will cap his 12-day, three-country tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, his first to South America as pope and a return to a region where he spent years as a missionary. The 71-year-old pontiff has used the trip to call for greater unity in a politically divided region and to address an array of social, economic and environmental issues.
