The Congress of Peru rejected on Wednesday (04.2025) an request from the president, Dina Boluarte, to attend the funeral of Pope Francis in the Vatican, who died on Monday at age 88.
After a brief debate, the Parliament controlled by a majority of rights, denied the order with 45 votes against, 40 in favor and one abstention.
Boluarte submitted a request to leave the country on Tuesday between April 24 and 28 to be in the Pope’s funeral in the Vatican.
“The project of legislative resolution that authorizes the president’s trip,” said the president of Congress, Eduardo Sallejuana.
The Legal Legislator Susel Paredes questioned the request claiming that “if the lady wants to pray for the soul of the Pope, to follow her example, to be austere, that she goes to Mass every day, that she does not spend on superficialities.”
government laments what happened
The president of the Council of Ministers of Peru, Gustavo Adrianzén, regretted that Congress has denied permission to President Boluarte, since she represents the nation and tried to pay tribute to the highest level.
-“I’m sorry that this was the result. I would have wanted that, like dozens of state chiefs who are going, we could have representation at the highest level,” added the prime minister in a press conference.
Adrianzén declared that the denial of the permission requested by Boluarte to Congress “bewildered”, because “it is not a simple protocol activity, (but) it is the concurrence of the president (…) to pay tribute to her holiness” and stressed that it was not “a pleasure trip.”
The Peruvian Foreign Minister, Elmer Schialer, will represent Peru instead of the president, the government announced after the vote.
Peru declared three days of national mourning for the death of Pope Francis.
The burial of who was leader of the Catholic Church will be Saturday in the Basilica of Santa María la Mayor de Rome, the first of a pontiff out of the Vatican from Pope Leo XIII in 1903.
JC (AFP, EFE)
