Pope León XIV gently pulled his hand away on Friday when Uruguayan former president Luis Lacalle Herrera bent to kiss the papal ring at the official welcome ceremony in Montevideo’s Plaza Independencia, La iguana TV reported. The ex-president tried again for a few seconds; the pontiff declined once more. The exchange ended in a plain handshake and went viral within hours.
The moment lasted seconds. The internet made it last all weekend. And buried inside the clip is a much bigger story: a pope from the Americas, seventeen months into his pontificate, opening a three-country tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru — and showing, when he pulled his hand away from a former president’s attempted kiss of his ring, how differently this papacy handles its own symbolism.
Lacalle Herrera leaned in, twice, on camera
The scene unfolded before the speeches. León XIV walked the line of guests at Plaza Independencia, shaking hands one by one, as La Nación described in its account of the ceremony. When he reached Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera — Uruguay’s former president and father of another former president, Luis Lacalle Pou — the veteran politician bowed toward the ring. The pope withdrew his hand. Lacalle Herrera persisted briefly; the pontiff avoided the gesture again, and the two settled for a handshake, looking each other in the eye.
La Nación noted the sequence was caught on the live broadcast and spread rapidly on social media. A post from Diego Martini Lemos on X on November 6, cited by La iguana TV, framed it bluntly: the former president wanted to kiss the pope’s hand, “something not permitted,” and León XIV removed his hand.
Here’s the context that matters: popes in recent decades, following the example set by Francis, have routinely discouraged the kissing of the ring, preferring simple handshakes — a signal of humility and of distance from monarchical trappings. León XIV’s refusal fits that line. What made it newsworthy was the setting: a state ceremony, cameras rolling, and a former head of state trained in exactly the old protocol the pope was declining.
🇺🇾🇻🇦 El momento que el ex presidente Lacalle Herrera le quiere besar la mano al Papa, algo no permitido. León XIV le quita la mano. pic.twitter.com/QOhVyVYkZk
A plaza built to showcase democratic continuity
The ring moment was a footnote to a carefully staged political scene. President Yamandú Orsi convened the reception and, per La Nación, some 30,000 people filled the square. The guest list was the message: former presidents Julio María Sanguinetti and Luis Lacalle Pou, former president Lacalle Herrera, and former vice-president Lucía Topolansky — leaders from across Uruguay’s political divide, standing together.
Orsi made the point explicit from the stage. “And this country receives him — Uruguay, a country where the government, citizens who were presidents from different political parties, together with our people, can sit down, all together, with joy to offer him this welcome embrace,” he said, as quoted by Ambito.
Not everyone in the crowd was charmed. Ambito reported that Lacalle Pou posed for selfies with supporters behind the barriers while other onlookers shouted insults at him; he kept smiling and kept working the crowd. Uruguay’s tradition of coexistence between a laic state and its political factions was, in effect, the day’s real headline — and León XIV leaned into it. In his speech, La Nación reported, he defended the secular character of the state, argued that state neutrality should not relegate religion to the private sphere, and told Uruguayans that dialogue and negotiation keep differences from turning into confrontation.
What the pope actually came to say
León XIV linked his recent lung surgery to a broader argument: that access to diagnosis and treatment shouldn’t depend on a person’s resources. “Ensuring that health care is within reach of every person, regardless of their resources, is a responsibility that challenges all of society,” he said, according to La Nación’s coverage. He also praised Uruguay’s democratic continuity and its shift to renewable electricity generation, and raised harder subjects — suicide, disability, poverty, exclusion.
By evening he had received the keys to the city at the Cabildo and closed the day with Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral. Saturday’s schedule, per live-tracking coverage carried by La FM Nativa, took him to Paysandú for a morning Mass, then back to Montevideo for an afternoon encounter in the Casavalle neighborhood — before the bigger stage awaits.
The pope lands in Argentina on Sunday, November 8, and stays until Wednesday, November 11, visiting Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Luján — the first papal visit there since John Paul II came in 1987, as La FM Nativa’s coverage notes. A pope born in the United States and raised in missionary Latin America, walking into one of the most secularized countries in the region, where roughly 59% of citizens identify as Catholic according to a compilation of national surveys by Universidad Católica Argentina cited in that coverage. “Dressed like Benedict, but speaks like Francis,” as Benedictine Abbot Christopher Jamison summarized him in that same report.
Why one refused handshake travels further than a speech
| Detail | Fact |
|---|---|
| Location of incident | Plaza Independencia, Montevideo |
| Date | Friday, November 6, 2026 |
| Central figure | Former president Luis Lacalle Herrera |
| Crowd at ceremony | About 30,000 (La Nación) |
| Tour’s next stop | Argentina, Nov 8–11 (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Luján) |
Watch Sunday’s arrival in Buenos Aires. The hands will tell you.
