Pope Leo ‘fell in love with Peru’ and ceviche: Peru bishop

This handout picture released on May 8, 2025 by Peruvian news agency Andina shows the then bishop Robert Francis Prevost during a visit to Chulucanas, Peru, in 2024. Prevost was elected Pope on May 8, 2025. The US-born pontiff close to Pope Francis, became a Peruvian national in 2015 and devoted more than 20 years as a missionary in Peru. — Agence France-Presse

Pope Leo XIV fell in love with Peru and its signature dish of raw seafood, ceviche, over his nearly two decades in the country, his successor as bishop of the northern city of Chiclayo said Thursday.

US-born pontiff Robert Prevost joined the Augustinian order in Peru in 1985 and obtained Peruvian nationality in 2015.

“He loved goat, duck with rice and ceviche, those were his favorite dishes,” Chiclayo’s current bishop Edison Farfan told a press conference.

He added that there were photographs in Chiclayo of him riding a horse.

Farfan recalled Prevost’s beginnings in Peru as a missionary in the northern town of Chulucanas, fresh out of university in the United States.

From there he moved to the coastal city of Trujillo, where he helped set up an Augustinian seminary, before finally winding up in the far northern city of Chiclayo, where he was ordained a bishop in 2015, Farfan said.

Leo gave “his whole life to the mission in Peru,” Farfan said, adding that the new pontiff, like his Argentine predecessor Francis, was particularly driven by poverty and by people living on the “periphery” of society.

In his first address as pontiff Leo broke into Spanish to pay tribute to his “dear diocese of Chiclayo” where Catholic faithful had given “so much” to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Prevost was seen as the least American of the US contenders to become the 267th leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, due to his long experience in Latin America.

Across the continent, his election was hailed as another win, following the papacy of Francis, the first-ever Latin American pontiff.

Left-wing Colombian President Gustavo Petro said he was “more than an American.”

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte called him a Peruvian “by choice and conviction.”/das