Pope Leo XIV is returning home to the continent where he spent two decades as a missionary priest and learned to be a pastor, visiting Uruguay , Argentina and his second homeland of Peru .

The Nov. 6-17 trip marks the longest and farthest of his papacy and is coming just three weeks after Leo underwent surgery Oct. 13 to remove a cancerous tumor from his right lung. Doctors nevertheless gave him the green light to make the trip.

Latin America still is home to around 40% of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, but the Catholic proportion of the region’s population has shrunk in recent year s and the decreases are especially notable in the countries Leo will visit.

Uruguay: Nov. 6-8

The trip begins in Uruguay, whose secular identity and separation of church and state are so deeply entrenched that Christmas is officially “Family Day” and Holy Week is “Tourism Week.”

According to Vatican statistics, nearly 77% of Uruguay’s 3.5 million people are baptized Catholics.…