Mid-City Christian: In Lima, Leo met abuse survivors and told bishops to make amends

In Chiclayo, Leo says proclaiming Christ is a crucial task

Returning to the northern Peruvian diocese he led from 2015 to 2023, Leo celebrated Mass on the Pampas de Pimentel for about 500,000 people, while local authorities said around 1 million filled the streets of Chiclayo. “What a joy it is to return to Chiclayo!” he began, thanking the faithful for their prayers “especially for my health during this time of trial which, with God’s help, I am overcoming.” He said no baptized person can be indifferent to evangelization, and that the answer to how to proclaim Christ today is “the witness of an authentically Christian and coherent life.” “Evangelizing, therefore, does not mean imposing doctrines or trusting in efficient strategies, but bearing witness to that real encounter with Jesus Christ,” he said, adding that “without truth, love degenerates into mere sentimentality, while truth without love becomes rigid and cold.” — Full text · Vatican News · Also: Holy See Press Office

To his former diocese: lay participation is not a concession

At the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace, Leo told about 5,000 clergy, religious, seminarians, synodal teams, and pastoral council members that “before any service, office, profession or ministry, we are baptized. Our primary identity is that of sons and daughters of God.” Vatican News reports he said communion must precede mission, urged pastors to revitalize parish councils, and called for welcoming the charisms of all the faithful, “since the participation of the laity is not a concession but an expression of their baptismal dignity.” Later, at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University, he warned against reducing education to job training and against “the most deadly risk of submission to the technocratic paradigm,” holding up St. Turibius’s defense of Indigenous peoples. — Full text (local Church) · Vatican News · Full text (university) · Vatican News (university)

In Lima, Leo met abuse survivors and told bishops to make amends

On Thursday, Leo met individually with six survivors of abuse by clergy and Church institutions at the Lima nunciature, some of them former members of groups linked to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, the Peruvian society Pope Francis suppressed in 2025. The Vatican said they discussed “listening to victims, seeking the truth, supporting healing processes” and safe environments. Earlier, addressing Peru’s bishops, Leo said the Church must respond to abuse “with truth, justice, forgiveness, making amends and an ever more resolute commitment to fostering a culture of prevention and protection for the weakest.” NCR’s Justin McLellan notes that, as a bishop and cardinal, he was instrumental in the suppression. That day he also told a crowd in Lima’s main square, “Let us value women! Let us protect and respect girls!” and led a vigil for 60,000 young people. — Vatican News · Full text (bishops) · National Catholic Reporter (Justin McLellan) · Also: Full text (Plaza Mayor) · Full text (youth vigil)

Also today

Today: a promise kept in Santa Cruz — Vatican News. Leo celebrates Mass today in Santa Cruz, a town of about 5,000 in the Andes, four hours by road from Chiclayo, which he visited at least once a year as bishop for the feast of the Señor del Costado. The parish priest expects at least 100,000 people. Follow the itinerary on WPI’s trip page and read “Leo in the Land of Francis”.
At a St. Óscar Romero chapel, thanks for prayers — Full text. On a private visit to the chapel in Chiclayo, Leo said: “As you know, it was only a month ago that I had to undergo surgery, and God, through His grace, has been wonderful.” · Vatican News
New nuncio to India; Eldoret becomes an archdiocese — Holy See Press Office. Leo named Archbishop Waldemar Stanisław Sommertag, until now nuncio in Senegal, as apostolic nuncio to India; erected the ecclesiastical province of Eldoret, Kenya, with Bishop Joseph Obanyi Sagwe as its first metropolitan archbishop; and named Fr. Oswaldo Enrique Méndez Marchena an auxiliary bishop of Barquisimeto, Venezuela. On Friday he named Bishop Wayne Lobsinger, an auxiliary of Hamilton, as bishop of Peterborough, Canada, and Augustinian Fr. Joseph Onyango Oduor as coadjutor bishop of Kisii, Kenya (Holy See Press Office).
Pope Francis on the faces of poverty — Where Peter Is. Ahead of Sunday’s tenth World Day of the Poor, which Francis instituted in 2016, WPI revisits his message for the first one: “Faced with this scenario, we cannot remain passive.”

Compiled from publicly available reporting as of about 7:20 a.m., Nov. 14, 2026 (ET). Quotations are as published by the linked outlets.

This weekend edition was compiled with the help of AI tools and published automatically without editor review. Summaries reflect the reporting of the outlets linked, not the views of Where Peter Is. Please report any errors to the editors.