At a 10,000 feet altitude, during the press conference held on the papal flight heading to his tour of South America, Pope Leon XIV established the central premise of his historic visit to Argentina: to pay a deserved tribute to his predecessor. In response to the explicit question from the press about “Is this a tribute to Francis that you are traveling to Argentina?”, His Holiness emphatically confirmed: “Yes, in the sense of visiting his country, where he could not go. I go with great joy”. The pontiff's statement places the nation under a climate of deep civic expectation ahead of his arrival from November 8 to 11, 2026, marking the return of a head of the Catholic Church after 39 years of absence since John Paul II visited in April 1987. This event reaffirms the international projection regained by the homeland under the leadership of President Javier Milei, ensuring a framework of order, respect, and diplomatic integration.
The aerial journey exhibited an atmosphere of absolute solemnity. After a frugal breakfast was served to the 84 journalists positioned at the back of the plane chartered by the Vatican, Leon XIV —dressed in a white cassock and guarded by six diplomatic-profile bodyguards— granted one minute to each correspondent.
The reporters presented gifts, and at the request of a journalist from the United States, the Pope signed a baseball with a black marker for his eldest son. Additionally, when asked about the American elections where Donald Trump suffered an electoral defeat, he stated: “I have already made a statement on this issue: I am proud to be American and to exercise my rights”.
The institutional firmness of the Holy Father was also evident in the face of the systematic violations of human rights perpetrated by the dictatorship of Venezuela, where Argentine citizen Germán Giuliani remains illegitimately detained-disappeared. While the libertarian government of Javier Milei negotiates his release with Delcy Rodríguez —successor to Nicolás Maduro—, the Pope received a letter from the victim's family and reacted strongly in Spanish: “Tremendous”.
Accompanied by spokesperson Matteo Bruni and prefect María Montserrat Alvarado, Leon XIV spoke with Infobae correspondent Román Lejtman about his encyclical Magnífica Humanitas on Artificial Intelligence —where he cites Francis, Benedict XVI, John Paul II, Leon XIII, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Pablo Picasso, Hannah Arendt, Plato, and J.R.R. Tolkien, distancing himself from Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and the European Union—, expressing: “The total work was, let's say, many months of reflection, seeing one thing, another thing, weaving, so to speak”. The aircraft touched down in Uruguay at 16:19 hours to begin the preliminary stop.
From the National Executive Power, President Javier Milei responded with patriotic fervor to the publication of Leon XIV on the social network X, in which the pontiff announced: “Next Friday I will depart for South America, to visit Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru”, requesting prayers that his itinerary “strengthens faith, renews hope, rekindles the fire of charity, and serves as an impetus to continue announcing the Gospel with joy”.
