Formal tours are in development, including one from the national tourism ministry, which in August will offer a program with a suggested itinerary and historical research called Los Caminos del Papa Francisco, or the highways of Pope Francis, with tour sites in Buenos Aires as well as in the provinces of Córdoba and Santa Fe, where the cardinal studied and served. And some travel agencies are beginning to integrate the history of the pope into itineraries of Buenos Aires. Another, Say Hueque, is creating a papal tour with stops in Buenos Aires and the Jesuit ruins in San Ignacio Miní.
Visitors who don’t want to wait for the tours to form can visit a number of sites on their own. Below are some destinations for people seeking to examine the rich Catholic heritage of the country where the New World pope’s origins lie.
Buenos Aires
The Catedral Metropolitana
The pope was archbishop here from 2001 until his elevation this year. The church, which overlooks Plaza de Mayo near the Presidential Palace, was built in the early 1700s over earlier structures dating to 1580. The church was elevated to cathedral status in 1836 as Buenos Aires grew larger and received a bishop. The Greek Revival facade dates from this time period, and the interior includes a carved gilded baroque altar and a dais with a silver repoussé offertory table. Other highlights include a shrine donated by a soccer player in honor of victims of the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1982 and a memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the 1990s bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), inside the cathedral’s chapel for Our Lady of Lujan in the left nave. According to Susana Alter, a guide specializing in Jewish tours, the memorial includes “pages from prayer books that were rescued from the remains of the embassy, the AMIA, the synagogue in Berlin, different ghettos and concentration camps.” No visit is complete without seeing the mausoleum of General José de San Martín, who worked with Símon Bolívar to help free Argentina (among others) from Spanish rule.
Buenos Aires
Manzanas de las Luces (Blocks of Enlightenment)
Because the pope is the first member of the Society of Jesus elected to the role, the country’s many Jesuit sites have taken on new significance. One, a complex of Jesuit structures collectively known as the Blocks of Enlightenment, is connected by underground tunnels in which priests — and merchants during the colonial era who traded in contraband and slaves — could move unseen. The land was granted to the Jesuits in 1616 and includes the city’s oldest church, San Ignacio, and the Colegio Nacional, the country’s most elite high school. Guides lead tours that detail the history of the complex and explore a small area within the tunnels, whose extent still remains unknown. Visitors can also take in the Basílica y Convento de San Francisco de Asís, completed in 1754. On the day that Juan Perón’s government collapsed in 1955, the basilica, then home to Eva Perón’s personal confessor, Padre Hernán Benítez, was attacked and burned along with many other churches. The interior was damaged but restored, and the relics of the attack, burned wooden decorations, are on view in the church’s museum. Its facade, still intact, is adorned with statues of St. Francis of Assisi, for whom the new pope is named, along with Dante Alighieri and Christopher Columbus.
Buenos Aires
Nuestra Señora del Pilar
This beautiful white colonial church is one of many that dot the city designed by the Jesuit architect Andrés Blanqui. As it is adjacent to the Recoleta Cemetery, one of the city’s most visited sites, foreigners already chance upon Sunday services, but less often enter for tours of the convent, known for agate windows that hid the nuns from view and its creaky original floorboards, dating from 1732.
Buenos Aires
Barrio Flores
The site where the pope’s childhood home once was, Calle Membrillar 531 in Flores, became a pilgrimage stop upon his selection. People have flocked there, undeterred by the fact that Flores is among the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods, and that the building is not open to the public nor is even his actual childhood home. Still, on March 21, the Buenos Aires City Legislature declared the site of value to the city’s cultural heritage, adding a plaque that marked it as the location of his childhood home. Nearby is the Basilica of Flores, an early stop during his priesthood. Those unfamiliar with the neighborhood should hire a guide from a travel company.
Luján
Basilica of Our Lady of Luján
This basilica, dedicated to Our Lady of Luján, Argentina’s representation of the Virgin Mary, is the country’s most important religious pilgrimage site. It is in Luján, a city about 42 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, for a reason: A wagon with a statue of the Virgin Mary became stuck along its route in 1630, which drivers took as a sign that the Virgin Mary had chosen the spot for her shrine. Today’s basilica largely dates from the late 1800s and early 1900s and is an imposing neo-Gothic structure with double spires rising dramatically from the flat landscape of the Pampas.
Córdoba
Manzana Jesuitíca
No other Argentine city more completely reflects Jesuit history than Córdoba, with its Unesco-recognized churches and educational structures. Maria Belen Urquiza, Córdoba’s subdirector of tourism, said that with the selection of Cardinal Bergoglio as the first Jesuit pope, “many people asked about Jesuits’ history in Córdoba.” Ms. Urquiza stressed visiting the Manzana Jesuitíca, centered on the National University of Córdoba, Argentina’s oldest university, established by the Jesuits in 1613. The main religious building here is Compañía de Jesús, built in 1676. Other nearby towns, including Alta Gracia, where Ernesto Guevara, better known as Che, had lived for several years, began as Jesuit farms, supporting the church’s educational work. The Museo de la Estancia Jesuítica de Alta Gracia is the most accessible estancia museum for those on short trips and is near the Che Guevara museum.
Visitors who don’t want to wait for the tours to form can visit a number of sites on their own. Below are some destinations for people seeking to examine the rich Catholic heritage of the country where the New World pope’s origins lie.
Buenos Aires
The Catedral Metropolitana
The pope was archbishop here from 2001 until his elevation this year. The church, which overlooks Plaza de Mayo near the Presidential Palace, was built in the early 1700s over earlier structures dating to 1580. The church was elevated to cathedral status in 1836 as Buenos Aires grew larger and received a bishop. The Greek Revival facade dates from this time period, and the interior includes a carved gilded baroque altar and a dais with a silver repoussé offertory table. Other highlights include a shrine donated by a soccer player in honor of victims of the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1982 and a memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the 1990s bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), inside the cathedral’s chapel for Our Lady of Lujan in the left nave. According to Susana Alter, a guide specializing in Jewish tours, the memorial includes “pages from prayer books that were rescued from the remains of the embassy, the AMIA, the synagogue in Berlin, different ghettos and concentration camps.” No visit is complete without seeing the mausoleum of General José de San Martín, who worked with Símon Bolívar to help free Argentina (among others) from Spanish rule.
Buenos Aires
Manzanas de las Luces (Blocks of Enlightenment)
Because the pope is the first member of the Society of Jesus elected to the role, the country’s many Jesuit sites have taken on new significance. One, a complex of Jesuit structures collectively known as the Blocks of Enlightenment, is connected by underground tunnels in which priests — and merchants during the colonial era who traded in contraband and slaves — could move unseen. The land was granted to the Jesuits in 1616 and includes the city’s oldest church, San Ignacio, and the Colegio Nacional, the country’s most elite high school. Guides lead tours that detail the history of the complex and explore a small area within the tunnels, whose extent still remains unknown. Visitors can also take in the Basílica y Convento de San Francisco de Asís, completed in 1754. On the day that Juan Perón’s government collapsed in 1955, the basilica, then home to Eva Perón’s personal confessor, Padre Hernán Benítez, was attacked and burned along with many other churches. The interior was damaged but restored, and the relics of the attack, burned wooden decorations, are on view in the church’s museum. Its facade, still intact, is adorned with statues of St. Francis of Assisi, for whom the new pope is named, along with Dante Alighieri and Christopher Columbus.
Buenos Aires
Nuestra Señora del Pilar
This beautiful white colonial church is one of many that dot the city designed by the Jesuit architect Andrés Blanqui. As it is adjacent to the Recoleta Cemetery, one of the city’s most visited sites, foreigners already chance upon Sunday services, but less often enter for tours of the convent, known for agate windows that hid the nuns from view and its creaky original floorboards, dating from 1732.
Buenos Aires
Barrio Flores
The site where the pope’s childhood home once was, Calle Membrillar 531 in Flores, became a pilgrimage stop upon his selection. People have flocked there, undeterred by the fact that Flores is among the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods, and that the building is not open to the public nor is even his actual childhood home. Still, on March 21, the Buenos Aires City Legislature declared the site of value to the city’s cultural heritage, adding a plaque that marked it as the location of his childhood home. Nearby is the Basilica of Flores, an early stop during his priesthood. Those unfamiliar with the neighborhood should hire a guide from a travel company.
Luján
Basilica of Our Lady of Luján
This basilica, dedicated to Our Lady of Luján, Argentina’s representation of the Virgin Mary, is the country’s most important religious pilgrimage site. It is in Luján, a city about 42 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, for a reason: A wagon with a statue of the Virgin Mary became stuck along its route in 1630, which drivers took as a sign that the Virgin Mary had chosen the spot for her shrine. Today’s basilica largely dates from the late 1800s and early 1900s and is an imposing neo-Gothic structure with double spires rising dramatically from the flat landscape of the Pampas.
Córdoba
Manzana Jesuitíca
No other Argentine city more completely reflects Jesuit history than Córdoba, with its Unesco-recognized churches and educational structures. Maria Belen Urquiza, Córdoba’s subdirector of tourism, said that with the selection of Cardinal Bergoglio as the first Jesuit pope, “many people asked about Jesuits’ history in Córdoba.” Ms. Urquiza stressed visiting the Manzana Jesuitíca, centered on the National University of Córdoba, Argentina’s oldest university, established by the Jesuits in 1613. The main religious building here is Compañía de Jesús, built in 1676. Other nearby towns, including Alta Gracia, where Ernesto Guevara, better known as Che, had lived for several years, began as Jesuit farms, supporting the church’s educational work. The Museo de la Estancia Jesuítica de Alta Gracia is the most accessible estancia museum for those on short trips and is near the Che Guevara museum.
