Papal visit to Pucallpa could prove decisive for Church in Amazon region, Peruvian prelates predict
August 15, 2026
Two Peruvian prelates who minister in Peruvian Amazonia predicted that Pope Leo XIV’s scheduled November visit to the Amazonian city of Pucallpa could prove decisive for the Church in the region.
“For the Amazonian bishops, it is a great achievement that he can come to a city like Pucallpa and, from there, address the world,” Bishop Miguel Ángel Cadenas, apostolic vicar of Iquito, said on León XIV vuelve a casa (Leo XIV Returns Home), a program of the Archdiocese of Lima. “The message he brings us in Pucallpa will shape the Amazonian Church not only in Peru, but throughout the Pan-Amazon region, in the years to come.”
Pope Leo’s visit is a “great joy for all of Peru, but let us not forget that he is the representative of Jesus who comes to visit us and asks us to radically change our way of life so that we may draw closer to the Gospel of Jesus,” Bishop Cadenas added.
Bishops David Martínez de Aguirre, apostolic vicar of Puerto Maldonado, said that the papal visit of Pucallpa augurs a continued emphasis on synodality and mission.
“The synodality that Popes Francis and Leo XIV remind us of is not the invention of something new: it is an attempt to recover what is most genuine about the Church,” the prelate said. “And Pope Leo, in his way of being and acting—first as a missionary, as an Augustinian, as superior of the Augustinians, then as bishop of Chiclayo, and later when he served as prefect in Rome—has that style of a synodal Church.”
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