Photo: AFP/Bay Ismoyo
Máté Szakáli
20/09/2024 06:00
One of the motivations for the trip, which was postponed because of the epidemic situation, was that a papal pilgrimage would mobilise both clergy and laity, strengthening the Church's sense of mission. Francis also has strong fraternal ties with the Catholics there. As part of his commitment to inclusiveness, he has appointed cardinals from Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore for the first time in the history of the Church. But beyond the religious dimension, Francis is also the absolute monarch and head of state of the Vatican City State, where the Church's governing body, the Holy See, is based. The Holy See maintains diplomatic relations with 184 countries and has permanent observer status at the United Nations, so the head of the Church is always a diplomat. It is therefore the interplay of these two roles, spiritual and diplomatic, that makes papal travel most exciting.
Highlights of the trip included a visit to Vanimo, a town of some 12,000 inhabitants on the edge of the jungle in Papua New Guinea, where the Pope took hundreds of kilos of goods, including medicines, clothes and children's toys, to help the local population. The Pope celebrated mass in Timor-Leste in front of around 600,000 people, almost half of the country's 1.3 million population, one of the largest attendances ever recorded for a country's population during a papal visit. Timor-Leste, 96 per cent Catholic, was the only Catholic-majority country on the Pope's tour. In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, Francis issued a joint statement with the national high Imam, Nasaruddin Umar, calling for global action on climate change. And in Singapore, he urged the government of one of the world's leading financial centres to seek fair wages for the country's more than one million lower-paid foreign workers.
Francis's 12-day tour was the longest apostolic visit abroad of his pontificate and one of the longest in papal history, covering nearly 33,000 kilometres on his return to Rome. The Pope, who suffers from knee and back pain, used a wheelchair throughout the trip, but kept all his scheduled meetings and public appearances and took centre stage at more than 40 events. Unity, respect for culture, interfaith dialogue, care for the poor and the environment were the main themes of his talks in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore, as well as his pontificate itself. The last event was a meeting with young people in all countries except Jakarta, Indonesia. None of his meetings with teenagers and young adults followed a pre-written text, and none ended on time. Instead, picking up a sentence or two from what he heard from his young hosts, he would usually start a dialogue and activate the crowd by shouting "I can't hear you" when they did not respond loudly enough.
Pope Francis spoke to government leaders about the main challenges facing each country, and to church workers he pleaded for a ministry that is close to people, ready to share their struggles and always conveying the joy of knowing that God loves and forgives. Recognising the fragile situation of the Catholic community in Southeast Asia, he repeatedly explained to church workers that the Christian call to share the Gospel is not about winning converts at all costs, but about living in a way that radiates Christian joy and always treating others with respect.
In Papua New Guinea, Francis offered a glimpse into how he thinks about the task of leading the global Catholic Church of 1.4 billion members and visiting Catholics around the world. In a spontaneous remark, he made his usual plea to a group of young people to pray for him. Then, stressing his need for prayers, he added: "This work is not easy".
Jorge Bergoglio wanted to be a missionary when he was a young student priest. He applied to his religious order, the Society of Jesus, for a post in Japan, but was turned down because of his health problems. To this day, now Pope Francis, he calls for the Church to become less institutional and inward-looking, more oriented towards the peripheries of society. All four countries have been proactive partners of the Vatican in the preparation of his tour of Southeast Asia and the Oceania, indicating a substantial receptiveness to this approach and the first Pope to have a Global South perspective.
The author is a researcher at the Eurasia Center