‘An immense emotion’: Andean missionary nun meets her former bishop, now Pope Leo XIV

“It has been an immense emotion” to see Pope Leo XIV again, said Mother María Priscila, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus, Word and Victim who serves in Cañaris, a Quechua-speaking town in the Andes in the Diocese of Chiclayo.

Her congregation works in the most remote and isolated places in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America. Besides being superior of her community, she is in charge of St. John the Baptist Parish in Cañaris because of a shortage of priests.

Mother María Priscila of the Missionaries of Jesus, Word and Victim at the prayer meeting with Pope Leo XIV in Zaña, Peru, Nov. 14, 2026. | Credit: Abel Camasca/EWTN News

She spoke to EWTN News after the pope’s prayer meeting on Nov. 14 at the shrine of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo in Zaña, which closed the jubilee year for the 300th anniversary of the saint’s canonization.

“I felt a great deal of emotion, because I was fortunate enough to work in Incahuasi, and that is where we had his first visit [in 2014], when he was appointed apostolic administrator. We welcomed him with great emotion and great joy,” she said.

Incahuasi, another Andean town, was a place the pope had wanted to visit, but it was dropped from…