Argentine President Javier Milei welcomed Pope Leo XIV at Jorge Newbery Airport, where the two leaders shook hands before standing side by side on a red carpet for an official ceremony featuring the national guard. The pope also greeted Karina Milei, the president’s sister and secretary general of the presidency, Argentina’s senior clergy and a group of children and young people on the tarmac.
That night the Obelisco was illuminated with a projection of the pontiff’s face, the first switch-on in a city-wide illumination of monuments and façades, from the Floralis Genérica and Planetario to the Teatro Colón and Cabildo, dressed in Vatican yellow and white.
The four-day visit, the first papal trip to Argentina since John Paul II in 1987, is the second leg of a 12-day tour that began in Uruguay and ends in Peru. It resonates because Argentina is the homeland of his predecessor, Pope Francis, who never returned during his 12-year papacy.
The meeting with Milei, whose austerity has reshaped the economy, produced a pointed contrast: the pope said “the economy must serve the person, not the person.”