May 21 (Reuters) – Pope Leo is set to visit Uruguay in November, news outlet Teledoce reported on Thursday, citing the Catholic Church in Montevideo.
Uruguay’s foreign ministry confirmed to Reuters it is preparing for the visit, which would form part of a broader tour of southern Latin America announced in February and is expected to also include Peru and Argentina.
The visit would be notable in Uruguay, one of the region’s most secular countries, where church and state are formally separated.
Pope Leo’s visit to the region at the end of the year is expected to draw large crowds to see a pontiff, who was a missionary in Peru for decades.
Leo, the former U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost, was first ordained a bishop for the diocese of Chiclayo, in Peru’s northwest, and became a Peruvian citizen in 2015.
(Reporting by Kylie Madry and Lucinda Elliott; Editing by Natalia Siniawski)
