Pope Leo cleared for long South America trip
The Vatican says Pope Leo, 71, is healthy and needs no extra precautions for a trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru that begins Friday and runs through November 17, Reuters reports. The journey covers about 31,000 km, 10 cities and 36 speeches, and comes weeks after the pope's lung cancer surgery on October 13. Read at Reuters (via The Star) →
St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, the traveling archbishop of Lima
What happened then
Turibius of Mogrovejo, a Spanish law scholar, was made archbishop of Lima and arrived in Peru in 1581. His diocese stretched across a huge territory of coast and Andes, and he set out to visit all of it in person, often on foot.
What caused it
Peru was still recovering from the conquest and civil wars, and Turibius found clergy neglecting their flocks and native people abused by officials. He believed a bishop had to see his people with his own eyes and speak to them in their own languages.
How it was resolved
His first visitation took seven years and his second four. He convened the Third Council of Lima (1582–83), which produced a catechism in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara, printed in 1584, and he founded a seminary and hospitals while reproving abuses by the powerful.
How it turned out
He fell ill on a visitation and died in 1606, still on the road. He was canonized in 1726 and is a patron of Latin American bishops, and the decrees of his councils guided the Church in South America for centuries.
What the philosophers say
In his Pastoral Rule, the handbook bishops read for a thousand years, Pope Gregory the Great wrote that “the ruler should be a near neighbour to every one in sympathy, and exalted above all in contemplation.” For Gregory, a shepherd who stays far from his flock can't truly lead it. Turibius's long journeys through the Andes, and a 71-year-old pope crossing a continent weeks after surgery, both put that ideal into practice.
Sources: Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints: St. Alphonsus Turibius (Project Gutenberg) · EWTN: St. Turibius de Mogrovejo · Wikipedia: Turibius of Mogrovejo
Further reading: Butler's Lives of the Saints by Alban Butler