Pope Leo XIV made a brief stop this Saturday, November 7, at the Monseñor Jacinto Vera Priestly Home in Montevideo, where he met with about twenty elderly priests residing there. According to the Holy See’s communiqué, the Pope greeted each one individually, emphasized that life retains its full value even when age or illness weakens it, and acknowledged the long years of service of those present. The visit took place before his tour of the Casavalle neighborhood.
Vatican media also reported a remark the Pope made to the priests, delivered in an affectionate tone: “I wonder if anyone has added up all their years of ministry!” Before giving the blessing, Leo XIV and the priests prayed the Our Father together.
A home for the diocesan clergy of the entire country
Founded in 1903, the home welcomes Uruguay’s diocesan clergy and has nearly forty rooms, a chapel, a recreation room with a library, and a large meeting hall. Its residents are mainly retired priests, generally over 75 years old, although others also stay there while recovering from illness.
According to the Uruguayan press, the stop was not on the day’s official schedule and represented a departure from the planned protocol. The Pope made it after lunch at the nunciature and on his way to Casavalle, one of the capital’s poorest areas, where he denounced that there are children who do not go to school out of fear.
The defense of life, from beginning to end
The gesture toward the elderly priests aligns with Pope Leo XIV’s first speech in Uruguay, a country with legalized abortion, where he defended the unborn by stating that “they already belong to the human family.” Whereas in that speech the Pope spoke of life at its beginning, at the priestly home he referred to life that weakens with age or illness, and to the fact that, according to the Vatican communiqué, it retains its full value.
The trip to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru is Leo XIV’s first to South America. In Montevideo, in addition to visiting the home, the Pope had presided the previous day over a celebration in the cathedral and, that same Saturday, the votive Mass of Blessed Jacinto Vera, the city’s first bishop, in Paysandú, after whom the residence for elderly priests is named.