Pope Francis leaves on Monday for a four-nation tour of Asia, a 12-day trip he calls a “show of strength” for the 87-year-old pontiff, with climate change and Catholic-Muslim dialogue high on the agenda.
VATICAN CITY, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Pope Francis leaves on Monday for a visit to four Southeast Asian island nations, an ambitious trip to spur global action on climate change that may test the mettle of the 87-year-old head of the world Catholic Church.
Francis will travel about 33,000 kilometers (20,500 miles) for 12 days from September 2 to 13, visiting Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. It will be the longest trip yet for the pope, who now regularly uses a wheelchair due to knee and back pain. The pope was a strong advocate of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, and aides say he wants to continue to urge countries to confront the dangers of a rapidly warming world, and to help those who are especially vulnerable. The countries he will visit face risks such as rising sea levels and increasingly severe and unpredictable heat waves and typhoons. The tour will start in Indonesia, where Jakarta, the capital, has suffered devastating floods in recent years and is gradually sinking, prompting the government to build a new $32 billion capital on the island of Borneo. Francis is due to headline more than 40 events during his trip, and some observers say beyond any specific itinerary he is keen to show that he is still capable of leading a church of 1.4 billion believers, despite his advanced age and ill health.
“This shows the strength of Pope Francis,” said Massimo Faggioli, an Italian scholar who has followed the papacy closely.
What does the Pope hope to accomplish?
Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University in Philadelphia, noted that no pope has ever traveled abroad at such an age: Francis' predecessor, Benedict XVI, retired at 85. John Paul II, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, made his final foreign visit at 84.
The trip marks the pope's 45th overseas trip since his election in March 2013. The pontiff has spoken frequently about reaching out to people and groups on the margins of society, and has made it a priority to visit places he has not visited before and where Catholics are in the minority.
“Francis has pretty much drawn a new map for the Church,” Faggioli said, “Catholicism is now global, and the Church is not just global, it's truly globalized.”
Also on the agenda is a renewed push for Catholic-Muslim dialogue, a long-standing priority for Francis, who in 2019 became the first pope to visit the Arabian peninsula.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, with around 280 million people, of which only around 3% are Catholic. Pope Francis will take part in an interfaith meeting at Jakarta's Istiqlal Mosque, Southeast Asia's largest.
Jeremy Menchick, a political scientist at Boston University who has written extensively on Indonesian politics, noted that the mosque is located across from Jakarta's Catholic cathedral and said Indonesia is in a “golden age” of interreligious dialogue.
“This is a time for pluralism, not polemic,” he said.
Pope Francis will arrive in Jakarta around midday on Tuesday before departing for Papua New Guinea three days later. He will have no public activities on Tuesday apart from a short official welcome at the airport as he rests after a night flight that lasted more than 13 hours.
Why did the Pope choose Asia?
The pope will hold official meetings with political officials, diplomats and local Catholics in each of the four countries, and will also hold outdoor Catholic masses in all four.
Catholics widely see Asia as fertile ground for spreading a faith that is in decline in the Western world.
Shihoko Goto, director of the Indo-Pacific program at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank, said the Pope's visit to Asia despite health concerns “speaks to the strategic importance of Asia to the church.”
Papua New Guinea, with an official population of about 9 million, has about 2.5 million Catholics, according to the Vatican. East Timor, with a population of 1.3 million, is about 96% Catholic, and Singapore has about 210,000 Catholics out of a population of 5.92 million, according to the Vatican.
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Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Kevin Liffey
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