Pope Leo is wrapping up his visit to Argentina on Wednesday with a final event expected to draw millions, before continuing on his 12-day South America tour with a visit to Peru in an emotional homecoming for the first Peruvian citizen to lead the Catholic Church.

Leo, on a three-nation tour through November 17, will celebrate an outdoor Mass at the shrine of Our Lady of Lujan, Argentina's most important Catholic devotional site, where throngs of pilgrims have been gathering for days to see him.

Crowds were stretching for miles outside the shrine, about an hour west of Buenos Aires, with people pressing against security barriers and chanting "Leo, Leo, Leo" and waving white-and-yellow Vatican flags as he arrived in an open-air popemobile.

Some in the crowd had walked as far as 10km to arrive, as many streets, including a main highway, remained closed as a security measure.

The pope on Wednesday also visited one of the Argentina's largest penitentiaries, where he hugged several inmates and urged guards to treat detainees humanely, amid a three-day visit to Argentina that has highlighted the Church's criticism of President Javier Milei's cuts to social programmes.

The pope, who has US and Peruvian citizenship, will then begin a personal leg of the most intense overseas trip by a pope in decades, returning to the place he served as a missionary for about 20 years before becoming pope last year.

The Peru visit, expected to include emotional scenes as the pope visits old friends and spends three days in the northern city of Chiclayo, where he was bishop from 2015 to 2023, will also test how directly he is willing to wade into the politics of his adopted nation.

Crowds for Leo's visit to Argentina have been intense, with the pope drawing more than four million people across his visit so far. A Mass in Buenos Aires on Monday was the largest single event yet of his 18-month-papacy, drawing 2.5 million. (Reuters)


Edited by Aaron Tam