VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis set off on a trip to Chile and Peru on Monday, a seven-day Latin-American visit which will see the pontiff rally a flagging local church on his home continent.

The 81-year old Argentine, who set off from Rome’s Fiumicino airport shortly before 9:00am, will hop on 10 flights to travel over 30,000 kilometres through hot and humid climates for his 22nd trip abroad.

On the eve of his departure, at least two people were killed and 65 wounded in a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that hit southern Peru, a country at the mercy of high seismic activity.

The Vatican’s number two, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, admitted last week that this “will not be a simple trip” for Francis.

On his visit to Chile, the pope faces protests from victim support groups over sex abuse scandals dogging the church.

He also risks a frosty reception among indigenous populations who have long protested the theft of ancestral lands by Spanish colonists and have recently taken to torching not only farms in protest but also churches.

The pontiff will have to tread carefully politically in Peru, which has been shaken by protests after the highly controversial early release this month of former president Alberto Fujimori who had been jailed for human rights abuses.

Pope Francis said on Monday he was really afraid about the danger of nuclear war and that the world now stood at “the very limit.”

His comment came after Hawaii issued a false missile alert that provoked panic in the US state and highlighted the risk of possible unintended nuclear war with North Korea.

Asked if he was worried about the possibility of nuclear war, Pope Francis said: “I think we are at the very limit. I am really afraid of this. One accident is enough to precipitate things.” He did not mention Hawaii or North Korea.

Pope Francis has often flagged the danger of nuclear warfare and in November he appeared to harden the Catholic Church’s teaching against nuclear weapons, saying countries should not stockpile them even for the purpose of deterrence.

As reporters boarded his plane bound for Chile, Vatican officials handed out a photograph taken in 1945 that shows a young Japanese boy carrying his dead brother on his shoulders following the US nuclear attack on Nagasaki.

“I was moved when I saw this. The only thing I could think of adding were the words ‘the fruit of war’,” Francis said, referring to a caption put on the back of the image.

Reuters