Pope Leo drew 650,000 people in Córdoba, officials say. A day earlier, 2.5 million attended in Buenos Aires.
Pope Leo XIV drew an estimated 650,000 people to an open-air Mass in Córdoba, Argentina, on Tuesday, a day after about 2.5 million attended his first Mass in Buenos Aires. The Vatican said 650,000 were on hand at the Military Aviation School grounds on the outskirts of Argentina’s second-largest city. Many traveled from across the country, from the north to Patagonia.
In his homily, Leo called Córdoba a “home of saints” and said all Christians are called to holiness, and that this calling is always missionary. He noted the city’s saints, including José Gabriel del Rosario Brochero, known as the “Gaucho priest,” and “Mama Antula,” who became Argentina’s first female saint in 2024. Pope Francis canonized both.
After Mass, Leo appeared on the balcony of the archbishop’s residence downtown, the same balcony from which John Paul II greeted the city in 1987. Thousands chanted “León, León” in the street below. “United, we can do anything,” the pope told them. It was the first papal visit to Córdoba in nearly 40 years.
Monday’s turnout in Buenos Aires was the largest for any of Leo’s foreign Masses so far. The pope is on a 12-day trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru that runs through Nov. 17. On Wednesday he will visit a prison in Buenos Aires and celebrate Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Luján before flying to Peru.
This report draws on the Associated Press, Reuters, America Magazine, OSV News and the National Catholic Register.