If any proof were needed to underline that the next voyage of the Pope Francis to Asia and Oceania is the most longfurther far and more challenging of his pontificate, is that he is bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country agenda while keeping up with work at home.
Francisco will tour 32,814 kilometers by plane during his visit from September 2 to 13 to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Eastern and Singaporefar surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and marking one of the longest papal journeys in history, both in terms of days traveled and distances traveled.
It is no small thing for a Pope who will fulfill 88 years old In December, he is wheelchair-bound, having lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection when he was young and having to cancel his last foreign trip (to Dubai in November to attend the UN climate conference) at the last minute on doctors’ orders.
But Francis is going ahead with this trip, initially planned for 2020 but postponed due to COVID-19. He will take with him his medical team, consisting of a doctor and two nurses, and will take the usual health precautions on the ground. But, as a novelty, adds his personal secretaries to the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.
The long journey reminds us of the globetrotting trips of Saint John Paul IIwho visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, even though East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his historic 1989 trip.
By retracing the steps of John Paul II, Francis is reinforcing the importance of Asia for the Catholic Church, as one of the few places where the Church is growing in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations. And he is stressing that the complex region also embodies some of his main priorities as Pope: the emphasis on interreligious and intercultural dialogue, care for the environment and insistence on the spiritual component of economic development.
Here is an overview of the trip and some of the issues likely to be raised, with the Vatican’s relations with China ever present in the background of a region in which Beijing exerts enormous influence.
Francisco loves gestures of interfaith fraternity and harmonyand there could be no better symbol of religious tolerance at the start of your trip than the underground “Friendship Tunnel” that links Indonesia’s main Istiqlal mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.
Francis will visit the underpass in central Jakarta with the Grand Imam, Nasaruddin Umarbefore both take part in an interfaith meeting and sign a joint declaration.
Francis has made the improvement of relations between Christians and Muslims a priority, and has often used his trips abroad to promote his agenda of engaging religious leaders to work for peace and tolerance, and to renounce violence in the name of God.
Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population and has enshrined religious freedom in its constitution, officially recognising six religions: Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Protestantism and Catholicism. Francis is likely to highlight this tradition of religious tolerance and celebrate it as a message to the wider world.
“If we are able to create a kind of collaboration between each other, that could be a great strength of the Indonesian nation.“the imam said in an interview.
Francis was elected pope in 2013 largely on the strength of an extemporaneous speech he gave to his fellow cardinals in which he said the Catholic Church needed to go to the “peripheries” to reach those most in need of God’s comfort. When Francis heads into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, he will befulfilling one of the marching orders he established for the future Pope on the eve of his own election.
Few places are as remote, peripheral and poverty-stricken as Vanimo, a coastal town in the north of the main island of New Guinea. There Francis will meet with missionaries from his native Argentina working to bring Christianity to a largely tribal people who still practice pagan traditions alongside the Catholic faith.
“If we suspend our preconceived ideas, even in tribal cultures we can find human values close to Christian ideals,” he told the missionary news agency. Faith Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who heads the Vatican’s office of missionary evangelization and is part of the Vatican delegation.
Francis is likely to reflect on the environmental threats looming over vulnerable and poor places like Papua New Guinea, such as deep-sea mining and climate change, while highlighting the diversity of its roughly 10 million people, who speak some 800 languages but are prone to tribal conflict.
When John Paul II He visited East Timor in 1989 to comfort its predominantly Catholic population, which had been suffering under brutal and bloody Indonesian occupation for 15 years.
“For many years, they have experienced destruction and death as a result of conflict; they know what it means to be victims of hatred and fighting.“I am the Pope,” John Paul II told the faithful during a Mass by the sea in Tasi-Toli, near Dili.
“I pray that those who bear responsibility for life in East Timor will act with wisdom and goodwill towards all, as they seek a just and peaceful solution to the current difficulties,” he said in a direct challenge to Indonesia.
It would take another decade for the United Nations to organize a referendum on Timor’s independence, after which Indonesia responded with a scorched-earth campaign that left the former Portuguese colony devastated. East Timor emerged as an independent country in 2002.but still bears the trauma and scars of an occupation that left up to 200,000 dead, almost a quarter of the population.
Francis will literally follow in the footsteps of John Paul II when he celebrates Mass on the same esplanade by the sea as that 1989 liturgy, which some consider a key date in the Timorese independence movement.
“That mass with the Pope was a very strong and important moment for the identity of Timor.“It also brought the tragedy of Timor into the spotlight for the international community,” says Giorgio Bernardelli, director of AsiaNews, the missionary news agency.
Another legacy that Francis will face is the scandal of sexual abuse of the clergy: the revered independence hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belowas secretly sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020 for sexually abusing young boys.
It is not known whether Francis will be referring to Belo, who remains venerated in East Timor but has been banned by the Vatican from ever returning.
Francis has taken advantage of several of his trips abroad to send messages to China, whether direct telegrams of greeting when he flies over Chinese airspace or more indirect gestures of esteem, friendship and fraternity to the Chinese people when he is nearby.
Francis’ visit to Singaporewhere three-quarters of the population is ethnic Chinese and Mandarin is the official language, will give him another chance to approaching Beijingas the Vatican seeks to improve ties for the sake of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics.
“They are a faithful people, who have lived through many things and have remained faithful,” Francis told the Chinese province of his Jesuit order in a recent interview.
The trip comes a month before the Vatican is set to renew a landmark 2018 agreement governing bishop appointments.
Just last week, the Vatican reported its “satisfaction” that China had officially recognized the bishop of Tianjin, Melchior Shi Hongzhen, who, as far as the Vatican was concerned, had actually taken office as bishop in 2019. The Holy See said China’s official recognition of him under civil law was now “a positive fruit of the dialogue established over the years between the Holy See and the Chinese government.”
But by arriving in Singapore, a regional economic powerhouse that maintains good relations with both China and the United States, Francis is also wading into a long-running maritime dispute, as China has become increasingly assertive with its presence in the South China Sea.
(AP)