Crypto News: Pope Leo’s homecoming

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Pope Leo XIV is heading to Latin America at quite a moment.

After last-minute surgery for lung cancer, the first American pontiff begins an 11-day tour de force today covering 19,000 miles.

It will take him through Uruguay, Argentina and wind up in Peru, the country where he spent 20 years, took citizenship and honed the pastoral skills that eventually carried him to Rome.

It’s a homecoming. But it’s also a test of the spiritual and increasingly political voice Leo has been finding over his first 18 months in the Vatican.

Pope Leo prays at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City on Jan. 6.

The mild-mannered Midwesterner once dubbed the Quiet American has been an unlikely adversary for President Donald Trump.

Their clashes back in April over the Iran war showed flashes of steel beneath Leo’s measured style — and put him on the right side of US voters who punished Trump’s Republicans this week for the conflict and its impact on surging prices.

Now the pope is heading into a part of the world the president unashamedly regards as Washington’s backyard.

Trump has been pushing to strengthen US influence in Latin America, finding allies among a growing cast of right-wing leaders, from Peru’s Keiko Fujimori to Argentina’s Javier Milei.

But Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, stopped the conservative sweep of the region in its tracks with his surprise defeat of MAGA-friendly Flávio Bolsonaro.

The pope in Bernebeu stadium in Madrid on June 8.

Into this new, charged political climate steps Leo.

Both Fujimori, a Catholic, and Milei, who was raised Catholic but has increasingly embraced Judaism, are enthusiastically rolling out the welcome mat for him.

Yet their tougher lines on Iran and migration sit uneasily with the pope’s anti-war message and call for migrants and refugees to be treated humanely.

Leo is expected to travel as pastor above all. But geopolitics will be riding alongside.

Another clash may be on the agenda. — Carla Samon Ros

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Chart of the Day

Emerging economies’ external debt climbed to a record $9.4 trillion in 2025, according to the World Bank, boosted in part by the poorest nations facing borrowing cost levels unseen since the 1980s. Lower-income countries paid an average of 8.2% when taking fresh private loans and 9.4% in new bond issuance last year, the bank says, referring to the countries that can get grants and concessional financing from the lender.

And Finally

Egypt has requested the return of the 4,000-year-old mummified remains of a priest whose removal from display at a Glasgow museum due to ethical concerns sparked debate in Scotland. The decision to stop exhibiting the mummy followed a recent change in the ethics code of the International Council of Museums urging the “inherent dignity” of human remains be respected.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.

Pop Quiz (no cheating!). Several countries threatened to boycott the World Championships of which sport after a tribunal ruled that Russia can take part? Send your answers to balancepower@bloomberg.net.