Mothers and grandmothers: never tire of passing on the faith!
Pope Leo XIV ended his visit to Uruguay on Sunday with a tribute to the women who have carried the Catholic faith across generations, according to Euronews, before departing for Argentina. Speaking in the city of Florida, north of Montevideo, the pope told mothers and grandmothers that although their children had drifted from prayer and the Mass, they should not despair. "Mothers and grandmothers: never tire of passing on the faith!" he said, in a homily delivered on the feast of the Virgin of the Thirty-three.
The setting carried its own weight. The pope used his final event in the country to highlight the church's role since the founding of what the report describes as Latin America's most secular nation, and he urged the faithful gathered outside the Cathedral of Florida — at least 50,000 of them, according to the report — to live their faith openly. "We must live our faith with courage, not be afraid to say: I am a Christian, I am a Catholic, I believe in Jesus Christ," he said. He became the first pope in nearly four decades to visit Uruguay, a trip framed as an attempt to remind an increasingly secular society of its Catholic identity.
The pope also turned to gender-based violence, calling on men to treat their wives with respect. Euronews reports that his homily addressed a prominent regional problem: nearly 20,000 femicides recorded across Latin America over the last five years, most committed by a victim's current or former partner. That passage gives the visit a social dimension beyond the pastoral, placing the church's moral authority against a pattern of violence that governments in the region have struggled to curb.
In the same homily he spoke of the attack in Krakow, saying he was deeply saddened. The source gives no further detail on that attack, and the circumstances, casualties and perpetrators are not established in the material available.
On Sunday evening the pope landed in Buenos Aires, where President Javier Milei welcomed him at the Casa Rosada. The visit is not without political controversy. According to the report, the Catholic Church has criticised Milei's austerity measures, which have slashed social spending, and his embrace of artificial intelligence. Milei has staked his presidency on cutting social spending to overhaul Argentina's troubled economy and deliver a long-elusive budget surplus; he has called social justice "an aberration" amounting to stealing, and dismissed as "huge stupidity" complaints that families cannot reach the end of the month.
For Argentine Catholics, the report notes, the visit matters spiritually, since it sees Leo reconnecting with the path of his predecessor Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who died on Easter Monday 2025. Whether the pope's presence shifts the argument over austerity is not something the visit itself can settle. What the trip does show is a pontiff willing to press the church's case in the region's most secular society and in the homeland of a leader who has publicly disparaged the church's social teaching — a test of how far moral suasion travels against economic conviction.
