Millions fill Buenos Aires streets to welcome Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo XIV celebrated an outdoor Mass in Buenos Aires, Argentina, drawing an estimated 2.5 million people into the streets of the capital to welcome him. The gathering was the second stop on a 12-day tour of Latin America and came only three weeks after he underwent surgery for lung cancer.
The scale of the turnout made the Mass a historic moment in the Argentine capital, with crowds filling the streets both to greet the Pope and to take part in the open-air liturgy. The visit underscored the continuing pull of a papal appearance in a major Latin American city even so soon after major medical treatment, as Leo XIV pressed on with a regional itinerary rather than delaying travel.
For an international audience, the story is both pastoral and political in the broadest sense: a newly recovered pontiff choosing a vast public Mass as a centerpiece of his Latin America tour, and a host city answering with one of the largest street congregations of the trip so far. The concrete facts remain those reported from Buenos Aires: 2.5 million people, an outdoor Mass, a 12-day Latin American tour, and surgery for lung cancer three weeks earlier.
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