A 14-meter-tall statue of Leo XIV, with arms outstretched, was installed this Friday in a public park in Callao, the port province adjacent to Lima, facing the Pacific Ocean.
According to El Debate, which reports on the transfer, the work is presented as the largest in the world dedicated to the Pope and is being installed days before his visit to Peru, scheduled from November 11 to 16.
The figure, about 12 meters tall, rests on a two-meter pedestal.
It was transported in parts at dawn from the workshop where it was molded to the park, where a crane assembled the body, the bust, and the outstretched arms.
The sculpture was created in less than two months by a team of 14 people led by artists Rafael Gutiérrez and Deyvi Wong, and was donated to Callao by Caja Huancayo.
A tribute to Prevost’s time in Callao
The mayor of Callao, César Pérez, announced the project with the aim of honoring Robert Prevost’s work as apostolic administrator of the diocese of Callao during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he brought food donations from Chiclayo, about 600 kilometers to the north.
According to the EFE news agency, the mayor maintains that the monument “will reflect and increase the Catholic faith” and could attract national and international tourism.
The mayor also hopes that the Pope will stop to see the statue during his stay in the country. The inauguration is scheduled for Monday, November 9 at five in the afternoon, local time, coinciding with the sunset over the Pacific.
Other statues in Lambayeque
This is not the first effigy of the pontiff on Peruvian soil. In the Lambayeque region, whose capital is Chiclayo, there is already a full-body statue in that city, where Leo XIV was bishop, and another in Pimentel, also facing the sea.
The one in Chiclayo was inaugurated in November 2025.
Leo XIV, who obtained Peruvian nationality in 2015, spent more than twenty years of ministry in Peru.
He will arrive in the country after visiting Uruguay and Argentina, on the sixth international trip of his pontificate.
Regarding the media and personalist drift of the papacy, InfoVaticana reported in August the warning of Monsignor Eleganti, for whom personality and not the office occupies the center.