PAYSANDÚ, Uruguay — An estimated 40,000 faithful flooded Parque París Londres on Saturday for Pope Leo XIV's first Mass in South America, turning out in rain and gray skies to see the 71-year-old American pontiff just weeks after he underwent lung cancer surgery.
The crowd erupted in the stadium chant "Olé, olé, olé, olé, Pope, Pope!" when Leo's plane landed in this western city on the Uruguay River, according to the Associated Press. They cheered again, blew horns and waved yellow handkerchiefs as he arrived in his open-sided popemobile at the sprawling green space on the city's southern edge, roughly 375 kilometers (230 miles) from the capital, Montevideo.
More than 30,000 people — many from Uruguay but also from neighboring Argentina and Brazil — had registered in advance for the service, the AP reported. The Vatican said another 10,000 showed up beyond that, undeterred by the morning rain and blustery conditions.
Crowds in rain ponchos, many in the Vatican's yellow, began streaming into the site when gates opened at 5:30 a.m. as a band played popular Spanish hymns. The Mass opened Leo's three-nation South American tour, a 12-day journey that had been in doubt after his Oct. 13 lung cancer surgery.
In his homily, Leo asked the faithful to build bridges of fraternity, recalling the nearby bridge over the Uruguay River that connects Uruguay and Argentina and over which many pilgrims crossed to attend. He also pointed to the ritual of drinking mate — the bitter herbal tea Uruguayans and their neighbors carry everywhere — as a symbol of unity and encounter that he suggested should be applied to spreading the faith.
The pontiff reminded the crowd that the Catholic faith had been "part of the life of the Uruguayan people since their earliest days, and it must be passed on to future generations with creative courage!"
Uruguay is South America's most secular country, with a population of 3.5 million. Leo, who arrived Friday, is urging its people to turn to the Catholic faith for strength in confronting today's problems and challenges.
Some in the crowd said they were deeply moved that Leo pressed on with the ambitious tour despite his recent diagnosis.
"He's the representative of Christ but he's human. And we weren't sure if he could make it, but he pushed through for us," Soledad Sánchez, 73, who drove to Paysandú from northern Uruguay, told the AP, her eyes brimming with tears. "He made it here to give us a message of peace because he knows our world needs it right now."
Later Saturday, Leo was scheduled to tour a Montevideo neighborhood beset by drug trafficking and gang violence, where the church is working with municipal authorities to build housing and provide rehab programs for addicts. His final event was a prayer vigil at Montevideo's Centenary Stadium.
The Vatican's news outlet posted highlights on X from the celebration of Vespers with Pope Leo at the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and Saints Philip and James in Uruguay. Instagram reels circulating online showed Montevideo preparing to welcome the pontiff.
Leo also honored Uruguay's first bishop, Bl. Jacinto Vera, remembering him as the "gaucho bishop" who evangelized the region in the 19th century.
Our Take
Forty thousand people in the rain, in the most secular country in South America, to see a man recovering from lung cancer surgery. That is not a news cycle. That is a witness.
The legacy media will report this as a colorful travelogue — the pope, the mate tea, the yellow handkerchiefs. They will miss the point entirely. What happened in Paysandú is a rebuke to the secularist project that has hollowed out the West. Uruguay, like much of Europe and increasingly like our own country, has been told for generations that faith is a private relic, a thing to be left behind. And yet 40,000 people showed up.
Leo XIV is not a politician. He is not running for anything. But his insistence on showing up — after surgery, after a diagnosis that would have sidelined most men his age — is the kind of witness that no government program can manufacture and no media narrative can suppress.
For American readers, the lesson is plain. The Left tells us constantly that religion is fading, that the future belongs to the secular. The crowds in Uruguay say otherwise. Faith is not dead. It is waiting to be invited back.
The question for every one of us is simple: when the world tells you to stay home, when your body tells you to rest, when the culture tells you your beliefs are obsolete — do you show up anyway?
Forty thousand Uruguayans did. So did their pope.
