Pope Leo XIV highlights poverty, migration and declining populations in Peru’s Inca heartland, urging support for struggling rural communities
PERU: Pope Leo XIV warned Saturday that the heartland of the ancient Inca Empire was “suffering,” as the remote, poverty-stricken communities he served as a missionary in Peru shrink dramatically.
The head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics flew by helicopter to the isolated town of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba in the Andes mountains — an area he visited on horseback when he lived in Peru as Robert Francis Prevost.
Despite undergoing cancer surgery just one month ago, the 71-year-old pope was determined to visit the town — which sits among green peaks at an altitude of over 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) — during his 12-day tour of South America.
