Stan Herd has been drawing with the earth for more than four decades. His portraits — planted, cut, and laid into the ground at a scale visible only from the air — have covered fields in Kansas, vacant lots in Manhattan, hillsides in Europe. He has never before built one in tile. He is doing it now, in Chiclayo, Peru, three days before Pope Leo XIV gets there. Close to a million people are expected on the Pimentel coast on November 13, when Leo XIV celebrates Mass in the city he served as bishop for eight years. The homecoming is, by any measure, an event. Herd and filmmaker Marc Havener decided it was also a story that needed to be told. The earthwork is one of two gifts being prepared for the returning Pope. The other comes from Father Cesar, a Chiclayo priest who served alongside the future Leo XIV during his years in the Read More…

A Kansas artist is drawing Pope Leo’s face in Peruvian soil