Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass on Tuesday in Córdoba, in central Argentina, before some 650,000 people, according to the newspaper El País, in a homily devoted to holiness and local saints. “There is no better way to teach than by setting an example with one’s own life,” he told the faithful, urging them to practise their faith concretely in daily life.
The pontiff left Buenos Aires at 7.30 a.m. and landed in Córdoba an hour and a half later. The Mass was held at the grounds of the Argentine Aircraft Factory, covering more than 200 hectares, with 50 giant screens. Many pilgrims came by bus from other provinces, walked the last stretch before dawn and camped in the open. Among them were 28 altar boys from a parish in Jujuy, 900 kilometres away, who raised the travel money by selling food and holding pet shows. “I was left with all my hopes,” said Dora Ponce, 76, who did not manage to see the popemobile pass and followed the ceremony on a screen.
In his homily, Leo XIV recalled figures such as Father Brochero and Mama Antula, venerated above all in the interior of the country, and highlighted Córdoba’s religious history, marked by the arrival of the Jesuits in the 16th century. Its Jesuit Block has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.
After the Mass the Pope privately received a group of about 20 people from various social struggles, among them Alba Camargo, who as a child was abducted during the last dictatorship (1976-1983) and lost relatives to forced disappearance. Camargo asked him to name the disappeared and for his words to encourage those who know something about those crimes, including members of the clergy, to come forward. The Vatican has not given details of the meeting.
In the afternoon, the Pope greeted crowds from the balcony of the Archbishopric, the same one John Paul II appeared on in 1987, and met members of religious orders at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption. “There are stages in priestly and consecrated life in which remaining is already a very concrete form of self-giving,” he told them. The meeting was especially moving for the cloistered nuns who prepared the celebration: they baked 400,000 hosts and polished the chalices and liturgical items.
Attendance at the Córdoba Mass was lower than in Buenos Aires, where authorities estimated some 2.5 million people, and than the million the provincial government had anticipated. On Wednesday, Leo XIV will celebrate his last Mass in Argentina in Luján, in Buenos Aires province, and then fly to Peru, where President Keiko Fujimori will receive him that night.