In January, Pope Francis will make his sixth trip to Latin America. He will travel to Peru and Chile, which shares a 3,200-mile border with Argentina. But the Holy Father won’t cross the frontier into his homeland. This is curious: when Pope John Paul II visited Chile in 1987, he made sure to visit Argentina as well.
In this age of papal globetrotting, non-Italian popes are expected to visit their native lands shortly after their elections. John Paul II was elected in October 1978 and visited Poland eight months later, in June 1979. Benedict XVI travelled to Germany just four months after the conclave of 2005. But four years and three months after becoming Pope, Francis still hasn’t set foot in Argentina.
