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Pope says Inca heartland 'suffering' as villages empty
The pontiff said internal migration, poverty and declining birth rates are hollowing out Andean communities as he praised local farmers and shopkeepers.
The head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics flew by helicopter to the isolated town of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba in the Andes mountains -- an area he visited on horseback when he lived in Peru as priest Robert Francis Prevost.
Despite undergoing cancer surgery just one month ago, the 71-year-old pope was determined to visit the town -- which sits among green peaks at an altitude of over 2,000 metres (6,560 feet) -- during his 12-day tour of So…
At Mass in the Peruvian Andes, Leo XIV spoke about the poverty that leads residents to leave rural communities and alerted to the low birth rate in the villages