Pope Francis has arrived in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, kicking off the longest and farthest trip of his tenure to the Asia Pacific region.
During his 12-day tour, which also includes visits to Singapore, Timor-Leste, the only country out of the four with a majority Catholic population, and Papua New Guinea, he is expected to emphasize the need of interfaith dialogue and environmental concerns.
For a man who turns 88 in December and has been dealing with a number of health problems, it’s an especially difficult journey.
One of the few regions in the world where the Catholic Church is seeing growth in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations is Asia Pacific.
Parts of the Pope’s trip, which was originally scheduled in 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic, will retrace the steps of St John Paul II, who also visited the four nations during his 27-year pontificate.
“Today I begin an Apostolic Journey to several countries in Asia and Oceania,” he wrote on X on Monday. “Please pray that this journey may bear fruit.”
Since his election in 2013, the Pope has urged the Catholic Church to bring God’s comfort “toward the periphery” – referring to communities who are marginalised or far away.
He is only the third pope to visit Indonesia, which has the largest population of Muslims globally.
According to Vatican News, during his four days there, he is scheduled to attend a mass for about 70,000 people, meet with outgoing President Joko Widodo, and tour the main mosque in the Indonesian capital.
The grand imam of the Jakarta mosque, Nasaruddin Umar, expressed his hopes for the visit’s potential to “discuss the common ground between religious communities and emphasise the commonalities between religions, ethnicities, and beliefs” to the news agency AP.
According to observers, the Pope’s visit to Indonesia underscores his desire to strengthen communication between the Muslim and Christian communities.
“For the longest time, there [have been] tensions. [Both groups have had] misunderstandings over the course of history,” said Jonathan Tan, a religious studies expert at the Case Western Reserve University in the US.
“I think what the Pope wants to do is to do a new way forward, a new way of relating to one another, not a defensive way,” he said.
In Papua New Guinea, the Pope will travel to the remote city of Vanimo to meet with missionaries from his native Argentina who have been reaching out to tribal communities.
Miguel de la Calle, an Argentine missionary in Papua New Guinea’s north-western-most city, said he hoped the Pope’s visit would “significantly boost” ongoing evangelisation efforts in the territory.
People have been travelling from all Papua New Guinea – and even across the border from Indonesia – to see the Pope, he told Vatican News.
“Some have been walking for days due to the scarcity of transportation,” Father Miguel said.
In the capital of Timor-Leste, Dili, the Pope will celebrate mass on the same waterfront promenade where Pope John Paul II once gave a speech in 1989 to console the local Catholics who were suffering under Indonesia’s occupation of the region. In 2002, Timor-Leste attained independence.
However, in the wake of news that hundreds of nearby homes were demolished, the glitter of Pope Francis’s visit to the nation has begun to fade. Before he arrives, nearly ninety residents were instructed to find new housing.Over the last ten years, the Pope has been spending more time in Asia.
He traveled to these areas four times during his pontificate: to South Korea, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Japan. At the time, just 0.5% of people in Japan identified as Catholic.
In addition, he has traveled to Thailand, Myanmar, Mongolia, and Bangladesh.
However, disagreements over who has the authority to name bishops in China have soured relations between the Vatican and the Chinese Communist Party, making it impossible for a pope to visit the nation thus far.
It is thought that an agreement was reached in 2018 that gives the Vatican input into these appointments.
During his trip, Francis will be accompanied by a doctor and two nurses. Concerns have been raised over the impact of such an ambitious itinerary on his ailing health.
Francis, who has had part of one lung removed in his younger days, had been struggling with respiratory and mobility problems of late – some of which have led him to miss his weekly Sunday blessings.
In November last year, he cancelled his trip to Dubai for the annual United Nations climate meeting because of a lung inflammation.
