Joshua McElwee
VATICAN CITY (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.
Pope Francis will travel about 33,000 kilometers (20,500 miles) over 12 days from September 2 to 13, visiting Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. It will be the longest journey yet for the pontiff, who now regularly uses a wheelchair because of knee and back pain.
Pope Francis was a strong promoter of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, and aides say he wants to continue to urge people to confront the dangers of a rapidly warming world, especially those who are most vulnerable, including rising sea levels and increasingly severe and unpredictable heat waves and storms in the countries he visits.
The journey begins in Indonesia, where the capital, Jakarta, has been hit by devastating floods in recent years and is slowly sinking, prompting the government to build a new $32 billion capital on the island of Borneo.
Pope Francis is due to headline more than 40 events on the trip, but some observers say beyond the specific itinerary he is also eager to show that, despite his advanced age and ill health, he is still able to lead a church of 1.4 billion believers.
“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.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee and Kevin Liffey Editing by)
