Pope Leo XIV arrives in Uruguay at start of S.American tour less than a month after lung op

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Nov 17, (AP): Three weeks after lung cancer surgery, Pope Leo XIV opened a three-nation tour of Latin America on Friday by declaring he felt better than he looked and crediting God, good doctors and his healthy lifestyle with his quick recovery. The 71-year-old pope arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay, Latin America’s most secular country, after a 13 1/2-hour flight from Rome during which he acknowledged "some people” had doubted whether he could make the grueling, 12-day trip at all.

"I confess that from the first day, I had no doubt and was convinced that this trip had to go forward,” he told reporters aboard the papal plane. As if to prove his point, he immediately got down to business, drawing huge crowds in Montevideo as he pulled into town in his open-sided popemobile. The Vatican estimated 30,000 people had turned out to watch him go by and attend his first event in town.

"Pope Leo, Uruguay is with you!” the crowd chanted. Despite the long trip, the 71-year-old Leo seemed in fine form as he arrived at the Plaza Independencia for the formal welcome and speech, held outdoors on a blustery afternoon. He greeted Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi and government officials, smiling broadly as the wind whipped the Uruguayan and Holy See flags behind him.

He kept going with a second big event at the Montevideo cathedral, presiding over an evening vespers service that ended at 9 p.m. local time, or 1 a.m. Rome time. In his remarks to Orsi, delivered in Spanish, Leo praised Uruguay's development but gently recalled its Catholic heritage in a bid to try to propose the Catholic faith to the country’s 3.5 million people to confront today’s challenges, a key aim of his three-day visit.