Pope Leo’s Argentina trip. What’s changed (and what’s not) since John Paul II

When Pope Leo XIV arrives in Argentina on November 8, he will be only the second pontiff in history to visit the country. The only pope who had made the trip until now was John Paul II, who visited twice in the 1980s against very different political backdrops. While the first was a hastily arranged “peace pilgrimage” of barely 30 hours in the midst of the 1982 Malvinas War, the second was a seven-day visit in 1987 that drew enormous crowds across a country that was just under four years removed from the most vicious dictatorship in its history. Pope Leo XIV will, of course, encounter a much…