LIMA, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Pope Leo will likely travel to Peru in November, the president of the nation’s Catholic bishops said on Wednesday, for a visit expected to draw large crowds to see a pontiff who was a missionary in the South American country for decades.
Bishop Carlos Garcia Camader told a press conference in Lima it was “very probable” that Leo would visit in November or the first week of December. Garcia, who recently visited with the pope at the Vatican, put the chances of a visit at 80%.
Leo, the former U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost, spent decades in Peru. He was first ordained a bishop for the diocese of Chiclayo, in the country’s northwest, and became a Peruvian citizen in 2015.
Garcia joked at the press conference that while the likelihood of a visit to Peru was 80%, the likelihood that Leo would visit Chiclayo during any visit to the country was 100%.
Garcia and most of the Peruvian bishops were in Rome last week for a series of meetings with Vatican officials, undertaken by Catholic bishops normally every five years.
Leo surprised the group by inviting them to have lunch together, an unusual honour.
(Reporting by Reuters TV; additional reporting by Joshua McElwee; editing by Will Dunham)