I was on a bus somewhere between Chiclayo and Trujillo, sleep-deprived and increasingly irritable, when the significance of having a missionary pope finally clicked for me.
By that point, I’d been in Peru for about seven days, filming an EWTN News documentary, Pope Leo’s Peru, that will debut Friday, May 1. And although initially excited to be in the Land of the Incas and retracing the steps our Holy Father took over nearly two decades in the South American country, aspects of the assignment were beginning to wear on me.
For one, common aspects of life in Peru — from pothole-ridden highways to hotels with paper-thin walls to dirt and debris along the roadsides — had me missing the comfort, convenience and familiarity of American life. Another thing I was missing was English, as I was growing frustrated with my inability to express myself fully and fluently in Spanish. Finally, I was missing my family, particularly my wife, who at that point was a few months pregnant with our first child.
But amid my own discomfort and yearning for home, I realized that, 40 years earlier, Pope Leo XIV — a fellow Midwesterner — had likely experienced his own form
