When Pope Leo XIV made his emotional homecoming to Chiclayo, Peru on Friday, more than 500,000 people traveled to the dusty plain of Las Pampas del Pimentel, where the pope offered Holy Mass, on a desert field not far from the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean.
For the region, the event was huge, with a crowd more than half the size of the area’s population.
After that blockbuster event, Leo had a more intimate appointment in his diary: A visit to the St. Oscar Romero Chapel — the church where his own priest secretary began serving Mass, in the Chiclayo neighborhood where he was raised.
The church is a significant one for Leo’s papacy. Shortly after he was elected pope, the pontiff made some phone calls, and quietly arranged for the crumbling chapel to be rebuilt.
The visit on Friday was meant to be one of the smallest events of the pope’s whirlwind trip through South America.
Only people who serve at the chapel – acolytes, choir members, and catechists, mostly – were invited for a quiet period of prayer, along with family members and collaborators from St. Joseph parish, of which the chapel is a part.
When the pope arrived, most of Chiclayo was still fighting traffic, to make it back from the desert Mass east of town. But still, a “small” event in a pope’s hometown is a relative thing. As he arrived at the chapel, a few thousand of his former neighbors, the men and women who once were his flock, were waiting to catch a glimpse of “their” pope — the successor of St. Peter and the pride of Chiclayo.
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Front and center outside the chapel, waiting to greet the pope, were the parents of Msgr. Edgard Rimaycuna, the Chiclayo priest whom Leo brought to Rome to serve as his secretary, closest personal aide, and constant companion.
The pride of those parents — the humble disbelief at the circumstances of their son — was palpable.
Mauro Rimaycuna, Msgr. Edgard’s father told The Pillar it was a moment of “immense joy.”
Indeed, the entire community had a personal connection to the pope.
Across history, Roman cardinals and popes have commissioned great churches in major cities. But this small chapel, in a working-class neighborhood of Chiclayo, was among the first to which Pope Leo XIV gave his attention from the Vatican.
The Óscar Romero chapel had been in disrepair for years when, from Rome, Pope Leo helped personally to see it rebuilt.
A parish volunteer explained to The Pillar that the chapel was in bad shape when its parish priest, Fr. Alonso Serquén, spoke with Msgr. Rimaycuna and the pope, asking for help renovating the chapel, which was familiar to both of them.
“I think we’ve all felt it: the people of Chiclayo, the people of La Victoria, and much more so here in this chapel of Saint Óscar Romero,” Maruo Rimaycuno said, “because the Holy Father is the driving force behind this place.”
The volunteer said that Pope Leo put Fr. Serquén in touch with an American couple, Joseph and Maureen Topper, who were classmates of the future pontiff at Villanova University.
According to a plaque Leo unveiled Friday, the couple helped fund a complete renovation for the chapel, alongside money raised by the parish community itself.
“We took pretty much everything down and rebuilt it. This was not a typical renovation, it was almost a reconstruction,” Manuel Segura, a parish collaborator, told The Pillar.
Ahead of the pope’s arrival, Rimaycuna reflected on his son’s story — from serving Mass in a rambledown chapel, to serving at the side of the Roman pontiff.
“It seems impossible … but nothing is impossible. He came here, we’ve had him with us, we’ve all been able to reunite with him, the family, all the friends he grew up with. My son doesn’t forget this place: he started as an altar server in this chapel.”
When Leo arrived on Friday, he was greeted by Fr. Alonso, while a choir including members of the priest’s family – his brother and four nieces – sung several songs to the pope.
“Today’s brief visit was squeezed in amid so many other commitments, but it was something I truly wanted to do, because it should be a sign of this closeness, of this desire to build community and to collaborate, always to cooperate, working together to continue the Church’s mission,” the pope told them.
“Jesus Christ came to give us salvation and gave his life by dying on the cross so that we might have salvation and eternal life. But he invites us all to enter into the experience of being part of his Church — to be sisters and brothers, all united in the Church — to continue the mission he began, which he wants us to carry on.”
“He calls all of us who are baptized, each according to our vocation — bishops, priests, consecrated persons, and also the lay faithful — to participate together in the communion that is the Church, to proclaim the Good News, to share our faith, and to continue passing on God’s love to one another, from generation to generation, among neighbors, and among family members. To share this great news that Jesus always walks with us.”
Later, the pope greeted the collaborators at the chapel, many of them personally, and gave them a relic of Saint Óscar Romero as a gift.
The relic is a piece of the alb Romero wore on March 24, 1980, the day he was killed celebrating Mass in El Salvador.
The chapel had already received one of the pope’s miters as a gift the summer after Pope Leo was elected, presented during a visit by Msgr. Rimaycuna to Chiclayo.
“Fr. Edgard was an altar server as a boy in this chapel; his parents live nearby. So when he comes back, he stays with his parents and usually celebrates Mass here or in the St. Joseph the Worker parish, but we all saw him grow up,” Manuel Segura told The Pillar.
“The pope came every year for confirmations, and he was a very simple man, very close to us, he didn’t want anything special for him because he was the bishop or something, nothing,” he added.
The chapel renovation is nearly finished, but the wall behind the altar is mostly still bare, save for some statutes. Fr. Alonso plans to have images of the apostles painted on plain white panels there.
“The engineer told me the design was meant [for the panels to be plain], so that we had to check with the architect, but Fr. Alonso wants to add the apostles and add the names of the families who collaborated in the construction of the chapel in the panels,” Segura added.
After the pope’s visit, people from the La Victoria neighborhood were ecstatic, even if they had gotten just got a brief glimpse of their local pope.
Many carried pictures of Pope Leo, or went around telling others they had been confirmed by him as teenagers, or that they knew them from their parish’s feast day when he visited them.
Marcelo, a 16-year old from La Victoria, told The Pillar that the pope confirmed his brother during the pandemic.
His mother, Carmen, showed The Pillar the photo of the confirmation,
“It was during the pandemic, so unfortunately they were all wearing a mask. But I’m super excited, because the pope has been a missionary priest, not an office man, and he’s the man to solve many problems in the Catholic Church now.”
“I never thought this would happen, but in Peru everything is possible. It’s a blessing to have a pope coming out of Peru,” she added.
Geraldine, a woman from La Victoria, came with Camila, her daughter, and Rubén, her nephew, to see the pope in the chapel in which she sang as a girl.
“I started in the chapel choir when I was 10. My brother, Fr. David Miranda, was one of the altar servers of the parish along with Msgr. Edgard, so we’re very excited to see the pope here, and to know that Msgr. Edgard comes from this very humble, but very faithful community,” Geraldine said.
“This was incredible, the pope has strengthened our faith, so I wanted to bring my little girl, my nephew, so they can grow in the faith too,” she said.
“I felt happy, proud of having the pope come here. He’s a very cheerful pope and he made us all happy,” Rubén added.
María and Isabel Acosta – mother and daughter – have lived all their lives in La Victoria, and came to see the pope in the chapel they’ve frequented throughout their lives.
“The pope came often for the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, so we’re all very happy to see him again,” Isabel told The Pillar.
María added that he never thought she’d meet a pope in person.
“I knew him, but thinking he’d come as a pope was impossible. It’s an enormous joy, I asked him to give his blessing and pray for all my children and grandchildren,” María added.
“I saw John Paul II in 1988 in Lima, but it’s something completely different to meet a pope who’s from your hometown, in your hometown,” Isabel concluded.
Reading this touches me deeply. Thank you for bringing it to life. God opened the way for two humble priests from Peru to rise to the ranks of the fisherman. Laudem Dei. 🌹