---
title: "Pope Leo Draws Millions in Argentina and Keeps Telling Milei the Economy Is for People"
description: "The Vatican counted 2.5 million in Buenos Aires and 650,000 in Córdoba, Argentina’s first papal visit in nearly 40 years"
author: "Nate Ledger"
published: 2026-11-10T17:48:27Z
modified: 2026-11-11T06:18:30Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/pope-leo-draws-millions-in-argentina-and-keeps-telling-milei-7f24da
language: en
tags: ["pope", "argentina", "milei", "catholic", "catholicism", "world"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Pope Leo Draws Millions in Argentina and Keeps Telling Milei the Economy Is for People

*The Vatican counted 2.5 million in Buenos Aires and 650,000 in Córdoba, Argentina’s first papal visit in nearly 40 years*

By Nate Ledger · November 10, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/pope-leo-draws-millions-in-argentina-and-keeps-telling-milei-7f24da

## In brief

- The Vatican said about 2.5 million attended Pope Leo XIV’s Mass in Buenos Aires, the largest crowd of his pontificate
- An estimated 650,000 attended his Mass in Córdoba on Tuesday, less than a month after his lung cancer surgery
- The visit is Argentina’s first by a pope in nearly 40 years; Francis never returned after his 2013 election
- Leo has pressed Milei’s government to protect unions and reverse cuts hurting the poor and people with disabilities
- In Córdoba he urged Argentines to follow the saints’ “holy example” and build a “fraternal and caring nation”

On Tuesday Pope Leo XIV said Mass on the esplanade of a military aircraft factory in Córdoba, in central Argentina, and the Vatican says 650,000 people came. That was the small one. On Monday in Buenos Aires the Vatican’s figure was about 2.5 million, the largest crowd of his pontificate so far, [as AFP and AP reported in pictures published by Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/gallery/2026/11/10/photos-historic-crowds-greet-pope-leo-xiv-in-argentina-after-40-year-wait). Leo is 71. He is on a 12-day Latin America tour, and he [had lung cancer surgery](https://rews.cc/a/the-pope-is-back-at-his-window-five-days-after-losing-part-o-4885e9) less than a month ago. Whatever else you take from the week, the schedule is a lot for anyone.

Argentina had a strange backlog of demand here. It had gone nearly 40 years without a papal visit, and for 12 of those years the pope was Argentine. Francis, who was born in Buenos Aires, never went home after his election in 2013. Leo’s trip, which [runs from 6 to 17 November](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visit_by_Pope_Leo_XIV_to_Uruguay,_Argentina,_and_Peru) and takes in Uruguay and Peru as well, is the thing Argentine Catholics were waiting for, and they traveled to see it. “It was quite a journey,” said Erika Vinales, a teacher who came 2,000km (1,242 miles) from Patagonia with a colleague, Elena Llanquenao.

![Two people overlook a vast crowd following a winding path toward a white-robed figure on a platform, with city landmarks beneath a blue sky.](https://rews.cc/img/cdc87531b55d473ca802976c52c8e2d88b445453.webp)

## The numbers

Crowd figures are estimates. Nobody runs 2.5 million people through turnstiles on Avenida del Libertador, and the organisation that gets to announce the number is the one with an interest in a big one. Still, it is the number everybody is using, and [CNN reported](https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/09/world/video/pope-leo-buenos-aires-biggest-mass-of-papacy-2-5-million-crowd-intl-christopher-lamb) that it beats the crowd that turned out at the same spot for John Paul II in 1982. Then, after the Córdoba Mass, Leo flew back to Buenos Aires for a late-night youth vigil that drew [an estimated 1 million people](https://www.ksl.com/article/51644956/pope-draws-1-million-to-argentina-youth-vigil-and-urges-them-to-follow-model-of-saints). Add it up: 2.5 million plus 650,000 plus 1 million comes to about 4.15 million attendances in roughly a day and a half. That counts attendances, not people, since nobody is publishing a deduplicated figure. As a measure of how many Argentines were willing to stand outside for a long time to hear one man talk, though, it’s pretty good.

I think the reason the numbers matter is that the man doing the talking has been arguing with the government.

## The other audience

President Javier Milei greeted Leo at the airport and hosted him at the Casa Rosada, and the pope used that first meeting to say, in the words of one AP headline, that “people, not the economy, should come first.” Over his three days in the country he has kept coming back to it. He has pressed Milei’s right-wing government to make the economy more inclusive, to protect trade unions and to undo funding cuts that hurt poor people and people with disabilities.

![A large hand holds scissors poised to cut a green safety net beneath a wheelchair user, a worker, and a child.](https://rews.cc/img/43794f6c979f4e400a61b1dc74ba8337c496529d.webp)

Here is the mechanism, such as it is. Milei’s whole pitch is austerity: cut spending, shrink the state, let markets sort it out. The pope controls no budget line and has no votes in Congress. What he has is a stage, and this week that stage held something like 4 million attendances, and from it he keeps naming specific line items, unions and disability funding, that he would like the government to reconsider. That is a weird kind of lobbying. He doesn’t need anything from the president. The president, presumably, would not mind having some of those crowds on his side.

Not everyone wanted the sermon on fiscal policy. A late-October survey found that Milei’s supporters wanted Leo to stick to religion, [UPI reported](https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/11/10/latam-argentina-pope-visit/2721794335042), while other groups hoped he would address the country’s social and economic problems and national unity. The pope seems to have split the difference by city. In Buenos Aires he talked about jobs, inclusion and corporate responsibility. In Córdoba, AP noted, [he did not directly criticise the government](https://www.cp24.com/news/world/2026/11/10/pope-urges-argentines-to-follow-model-of-saints-during-mass-in-the-land-of-saints/), and talked about saints instead.

![A haloed craftsperson repairs a wooden chair at a workbench beneath a coral spotlight cast by a hanging bishop’s mitre.](https://rews.cc/img/4c4b3b6abdd4004e6728bcb1d3e82237abb52a0e.webp)

The saints did a fair amount of work, though. Leo called Córdoba a “land of saints” and went through Argentina’s saints and blessed figures as models of the link “between passion for the Gospel and commitment to building a fraternal and caring nation.” He told people to follow their “holy example” and to evangelise “at school and in the square, in the family and with friends, in the countryside and in the city, at the dairy farm and in the office.” That list is built so that nobody in a crowd of 650,000 can decide it isn’t about them. The dairy farm is a nice touch. Nobody on the factory esplanade needed it explained that a “caring nation” is also a phrase about public spending.

That night at the vigil he told young Argentines to reject the “idols” of money, drugs and pornography. Money went first on the list. In a country where the main political argument is over how much the state should spend and on whom, people will notice the order.

After the Córdoba Mass Leo met privately with 20 people chosen by the archbishop. One of them was Alba Camargo, whose father, stepmother, aunt and uncle disappeared under Argentina’s 1976–1983 military dictatorship.

Leo moves on to Peru before the trip ends on 17 November. He leaves behind a government that has spent three days hearing, politely and in public, that it should spend more on the people it has been cutting. The government’s numbers come from its own statisticians. The pope’s numbers come from the Vatican, which is free to round up and nobody seems inclined to argue.