HARTFORD, CT — The moment Peru was named by the Pope, and in Spanish no less, a ripple passed through small storefronts, kitchens, and community halls across Connecticut—quiet, proud, and deeply personal.
“I was grateful, thank you for mentioning Peru, because it’s important to us,” said Aaron Chacon of Bristol. “It’s a bit of a moment for us, for Peru, and also for the United States…I live here, I’m from Peru, I love my country, I love it here, so I feel happy with that.”
This reaction was not to a policy, doctrine, or theological shift. It was a reaction to being seen. The Pope’s decision to greet Peru by name—during his first speech at the Vatican, delivered in Spanish—did something that institutions rarely achieve: it bridged oceans, memory, and identity.
Pope Leo XIV is not only the new face of the Roman Catholic Church. To many in Connecticut, he is also a name rooted in shared experience. His connection to Peru began four decades ago, when he first arrived on a mission trip in 1985. He did not pass through. He stayed. He worked. He ministered. He became the Bishop of Chiclayo. In 2015, he became a Peruvian citizen.
This citizenship was not honorary. It was earned. The decades of missionary labor in northern Peru shaped his pastoral understanding. For many in the diaspora, that longevity matters.
“Having dual nationality makes him very special because he has the ability to understand both worlds,” said Elvis Tuesta, Consul General of Peru in Connecticut, in Spanish. Tuesta emphasized the word “bridge”—not just in terms of language, but between two national identities.
Connecticut is home to roughly 22,000 Peruvian Americans. For years, they have built quiet communities—spread across Hartford, Waterbury, Bristol, and New Haven. Many arrived decades ago. Others are first-generation citizens. Most speak both English and Spanish, but their cultural memory lives in songs, food, and news from home.
Then, for the first time in memory, the Vatican returned that attention.
Pope Leo’s gesture was brief. But it was deliberate. It meant something more than protocol. His words, delivered in the language of his second nation, acknowledged the country where he once walked unpaved roads and heard confessions in stifling heat.
This history was not lost on Miguel Franco, owner of Piolin 2 Restaurant in Hartford.
“I’m surprised, I’m very excited,” Franco said. The sentiment was not abstract. In his restaurant, dishes like aji de gallina and anticuchos fill plates for second-generation Peruvians who never saw Chiclayo. Yet when Franco heard Pope Leo’s speech, it wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about visibility. “Hopefully it works for everyone, not just for America, for Peru as well,” he said.
That remark underscored a silent hope. For immigrants and their children, it is rare to hear their origin story mentioned from the seat of global religious power. Rarer still when it is phrased in their mother tongue.
The comparison to Pope Francis is immediate. Francis, too, came from Latin America. But unlike Francis, Pope Leo did not emerge from the region—he chose it. He labored there. He was not born to Peruvian identity. He built it.
This matters to those who left home. Pope Leo reflects a version of themselves many thought would never be recognized—bicultural, multilingual, loyal to both a homeland and a new nation.
That is why Chacon’s words resonated again. “I live here, I’m from Peru, I love my country, I love it here,” he said. The sentence is plain, but the balance is difficult. Pope Leo’s election gave those words weight.
For the Peruvian American community in Connecticut, the Vatican has rarely felt close. Its marble formality, its Latin rites, and its distance from South American realities have often felt like a different world. But the new Pope’s background interrupts that detachment. He served in places where electricity flickers and faith is carried on foot. He has seen poverty and spoken with indigenous families. His voice does not carry privilege alone—it carries time.
“You can feel the excitement in the air,” said one resident outside a bakery on Park Street, where the Pope’s speech played again through someone’s phone speaker, surrounded by loaves of pan andino and bottled Inca Kola.
Peru, in many ways, remains distant. Flights are long. Passports expire. Some families have not returned in years. But this week, in the Pope’s voice, the country felt suddenly present again.
His dual nationality is more than symbolic. It shows that citizenship, like faith, can cross borders. That commitment and community still matter. And that even the Vatican—rigid, ancient, Roman—can be spoken into by someone shaped by the streets of Chiclayo.
No one in Connecticut’s Peruvian community expects a sudden wave of policy shifts. But they now see something they hadn’t before: themselves. The Pope mentioned Peru. He did it in Spanish. He did it first.
And for 22,000 Peruvians in Connecticut, that single moment was enough to remember who they are.
