As he prepares to head to Latin America, Pope Leo XIV is very much looking forward to eventually visiting his native United States, the Vatican foreign minister said this week. Source: CNS.
“Obviously a visit to the United States is very likely, I would say, in the not-too-distant future,” said Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states and international organisations, at the foreign press club in Rome on Tuesday
“Whether it’ll be ‘27 or later, I really don’t know,” he said, since “one of the things that will influence it is eventually the American elections.”
Once the midterm elections are over this year, then the window of opportunity might open in 2027, he said, adding that too late in the year will start being “the vigil of the presidential election, so that may affect an eventual decision on the date”.
“But yes, there’s no doubt about it, the Pope wants to go to the States; he very much is looking forward to that,” the British diplomat said during an hour-long conversation with reporters.
Pope Leo heads to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru from November 6-17, less than four weeks after he had lung cancer surgery that removed his lower right lobe. Doctors have said the Pope’s recovery has been progressing well, no more cancer was detected and no further treatment was required.
Asked why the Pope did not put off the trip, which will include multiple long flights and high altitudes, Archbishop Gallagher said, “He’s going on this trip very simply because he wants to go.”
“He was looking forward to it,” and given the positive clinical reports, “he feels he can go,” he said.
The archbishop said he, like the general public, was surprised when the Pope announced in early October that doctors had found a nodule that then turned out to be cancerous.
When then 69-year-old Cardinal Robert F. Prevost was elected pontiff in 2025, he hit the ground running, the archbishop said. “I think there was a temptation to think, here we have Superman, the Super-Pope.”
“The fact that he has fallen ill, with, in many ways, one of the most common illnesses of our age, means that he is a poor mortal like the rest of us, and I think that that is going to change how we see him and possibly how he sees himself as well,” Archbishop Gallagher said, calling it “a bit of a game-changer” for this pontificate.
“But I don’t think it is going to be necessarily bringing things forward or accelerating things very much, at least not in the immediate future,” he said. “I think he will stick to his plan, and he will stick to revealing his plan” slowly, as he has done so far.
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Election cycle will influence when Pope heads to US, top Vatican diplomat says (By Carol Glatz, CNS)
