President Milei welcomes Pope Leo during historic visit to Argentina

Argentinian President Javier Milei has welcomed the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV, upon his arrival at Jorge Newbery airport near Buenos Aires.

Key points

• In Argentina, Pope Leo's schedule includes attending a welcome ceremony at Plaza San Martin and a session with Milei at the Casa Rosada, the official presidential palace.
• Since John Paul II's trip in 1987, he is the first pontiff to visit Argentina in almost four decades.
• Catholics comprise the largest religious group in Latin America, with as plenty of as 425 million residents identifying with the church.
• "Leo is going to make the visit that Francis never did, " remarked Reverend Lorenzo "Toto" de Vedia.
• Milei and his sister, presidential secretary Karina Milei, greeted the pope on Sunday against the backdrop of tensions between the administration and Argentina's Catholic Church over austerity measures.

Prior to his arrival, the pope spent three days in Uruguay, the first stop on his tour of Latin America.

"Without a doubt, it gives us great joy that this pope is visiting us, " remarked Jorge Silanes, religious director at the Pequeno Cottolengo Don Orione, a home for residents with disabilities in the Buenos Aires province.

As well as a sometimes fractious relationship with politicians like Milei, but the pontiff's visit comes against the backdrop of shrinking membership in the Catholic Church in Latin America.

But their numbers have shrunk over the last decade. A Pew Research Center survey discovered that, in Argentina, the percentage of self-identifying Catholics slipped from 71 percent in the 2013-2014 year to 58 percent a decade afterwards.

Though he was raised in the Catholic faith, milei himself has suggested he considered converting to Judaism.

Notably, the Catholic Church has additionally criticised Milei's austerity measures. It included slashing social spending and safety-net programmes for the poor.

Milei has defended the budget cuts as necessary to bring inflation under control.

Some members of the Catholic clergy, nevertheless, have taken a visible role in the protests against Milei's measures.

Leo, 71, the first US-born pope, will remain in Argentina until Wednesday and meet with authorities, diplomats and civil society representatives.

He will additionally visit a prison and celebrate mass in Buenos Aires, Lujan, and the province of Cordoba, before travelling to Peru, where he spent years serving as a bishop.

Notably, the previous pope, Francis, was born in Buenos Aires in 1936 and was the first pope from the Americas, but he never visited his home country as head of the Catholic Church. Francis died in 2025.

He and Milei had a notably contentious relationship, with the Argentinian president calling the late pontiff a "communist" and an "imbecile who defends social justice".

"Leo is going to make the visit that Francis never did, " remarked Reverend Lorenzo "Toto" de Vedia. This person works with poor communities in a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires.

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