BUENOS AIRES — Pope Leo XIV drew the largest crowd of his papacy this week, with officials estimating more than two million people — and some local outlets putting the figure closer to 2.5 million — packed into Buenos Aires' Monumento de los Españoles for an open-air Mass, the first papal visit to Argentina in nearly four decades.

The 71-year-old American-born pontiff, elected in 2025, arrived in Argentina on Sunday after opening his first South American tour in neighboring Uruguay, where he held Mass before an estimated 40,000 people in the border city of Paysandú. He was welcomed in Buenos Aires by President Javier Milei.

Before the Mass, Leo visited the Cottolengo Don Orione, a care home for people with disabilities in the Buenos Aires suburb of Claypole, telling residents and staff that their lives were "a blessing, not a burden" — remarks widely read as a pointed, if gentle, rebuke of the austerity cuts pushed by Milei's government. The pope later met privately with five survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, continuing a practice several of his predecessors used to signal the Church's reckoning with decades of abuse scandals.

THEIR LIVES ARE A BLESSING, NOT A BURDEN.

The visit carried extra emotional weight given Leo's health scare only weeks earlier: the tour had been in doubt after the pope underwent lung cancer surgery on October 13. Vatican officials said he was cleared to travel after a recovery period, though his schedule in Argentina was reportedly lighter than originally planned.

From Buenos Aires, the pope traveled Tuesday to Córdoba, Argentina's second-largest city, continuing a four-day Argentina itinerary that also includes a meeting with the country's bishops and stops in Luján. Argentine authorities had projected that as many as seven million people could turn out across the stops in Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Luján combined, though final nationwide attendance figures were not yet available.

The Argentina stop is the second leg of a 12-day apostolic journey that began in Uruguay and concludes in Peru, where Leo will travel from November 11 to 17 — a country where he spent years as a missionary and bishop before his election as the first American pope. For many Argentines, the visit is also freighted with national pride: Leo's predecessor, the Argentine-born Pope Francis, died last year, making this just the second papal visit to the country in history.