President Milei welcomes Pope Leo during historic visit to Argentina

Argentinian President Javier Milei has welcomed the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV, upon his arrival at Jorge Newbery airport near Buenos Aires.

Milei and his sister, presidential secretary Karina Milei, greeted the pope on Sunday amid tensions between the government and Argentina’s Catholic Church over austerity measures.

Prior to his arrival, the pope spent three days in Uruguay, the first stop on his tour of Latin America.

He is the first pontiff to visit Argentina in nearly four decades, since John Paul II’s trip in 1987.

“Without a doubt, it gives us great joy that this pope is visiting us,” said Jorge Silanes, religious director at the Pequeno Cottolengo Don Orione, a home for people with disabilities in the Buenos Aires province.

In Argentina, Pope Leo’s schedule includes attending a welcome ceremony at Plaza San Martin and a meeting with Milei at the Casa Rosada, the official presidential palace.

But the pontiff’s visit comes amid shrinking membership in the Catholic Church in Latin America, as well as a sometimes fractious relationship with politicians like Milei.

Catholics comprise the largest religious group in Latin America, with as many as 425 million people identifying with the church.

But their numbers have shrunk over the last decade. A Pew Research Center survey found that, in Argentina, the percentage of self-identifying Catholics slipped from 71 percent in the 2013-2014 year to 58 percent a decade later.

Milei himself has suggested he considered converting to Judaism, though he was raised in the Catholic faith.

The Catholic Church has also criticised Milei’s austerity measures, which included slashing social spending and safety-net programmes for the poor.

Milei has defended the budget cuts as necessary to bring inflation under control.

Some members of the Catholic clergy, however, have taken a visible role in the protests against Milei’s measures.

Leo, 71, the first US-born pope, will remain in Argentina until Wednesday and meet with officials, diplomats and civil society representatives.

He will also visit a prison and celebrate mass in Buenos Aires, Lujan, and the province of Cordoba, before travelling to Peru, where he spent years serving as a bishop.

The previous pope, Francis, was born in Buenos Aires in 1936 and was the first pope from the Americas, but he never visited his home country as head of the Catholic Church. Francis died in 2025.

He and Milei had a notably contentious relationship, with the Argentinian president calling the late pontiff a “communist” and an “imbecile who defends social justice”.

“Leo is going to make the visit that Francis never did,” said Reverend Lorenzo “Toto” de Vedia, who works with poor communities in a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires.