ROME – Just over a month ago, 81-year-old President Joe Biden made the apparently unwilling choice to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race, under a widely shared perception, even among Americans who respected him and supported him in 2020, that he no longer had the physical or even mental capacity to lead.
In other words, Biden's main political problem heading into 2024 was not what he had accomplished so far, but rather the fear that he would no longer be able to do anything.
In a very roundabout and indirect way, Biden's example may also help answer a glaring question about 87-year-old Pope Francis today.
So why would the octogenarian pope, now facing multiple health problems, undertake the longest and most arduous journey of his pontificate from September 2 to 13, at one point travelling nearly 9,000 miles from Rome, and why would he impose such an excruciating journey just two weeks before the Synod of Bishops, the pinnacle of his pontificate, begins?
Certainly there is a logic to each stop on this journey through Asia and Oceania: Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country; Timor-Leste, one of the most Catholic countries on earth, proportionally; Papua New Guinea, a traditionally remote missionary territory; and Singapore, one of the world's leading financial powers.
Pope Francis greets and presents Singapore's new Cardinal William Goh Seng Chee with a red biretta during the ceremony for the installation of 20 new cardinals at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican on Aug. 27, 2022. (CNS/Paul Harring)
But the appeal would be the same at any stage of Francis' papacy, and for now the trip has the added benefit of giving the pontiff an opportunity to demonstrate that rumors of his demise have been exaggerated, and that he remains highly alert and dedicated to his work despite his increasing physical limitations.
Of course, the pope does not have to run for reelection and, unlike the American president, is generally understood to be in office for life, despite Benedict XVI's resignation, but the pope still must exercise leadership, and the papacy is always destabilized when there is a public belief that someone else, or, more often, a shadowy conspiracy of someone else, actually holds the power in the name of an ill, outgoing figurehead.
The outing will give Francis a chance to make clear to the world, including his own flock, that no one is pulling his strings, at least for now.
Beyond that obvious motivation, there is a political and pastoral urgency behind Pope Francis' 45th foreign trip of his papacy, which will mark his 62nd, 63rd, 64th and 65th visits to each country during his papacy.
The political agenda of the trip begins and ends with visits to Indonesia and Singapore, which give Pope Francis an opportunity to polish ties with the Islamic world and Asia, including China, Singapore's most important regional ally and trading partner.
From the start, Pope Francis's overarching geopolitical goal has been to shift the Vatican's historical identity as a Western institution and NATO priest to a more global, non-aligned position. Currently, two-thirds of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics live outside the confines of Western culture; by the middle of this century, that proportion will be three-quarters.
In this 2011 file photo, a woman carries a large wooden cross during a Palm Sunday procession in Dili, East Timor. (CNS/Lirio da Fonseca, Reuters)
As part of this effort, Francis has launched an aggressive campaign to promote Islam, knowing that with its 1.9 billion followers around the world, it will inevitably be a major driving force in modern history. But so far, his campaign has focused mainly on Islam in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, when in reality only about a quarter of the world's Muslims are Arab, and the majority are in other parts of Asia and Africa.
In Indonesia, Francis will have the opportunity to test his globalist Vatican diplomacy and statesmanship in a Muslim country that, in principle, should be a good market for it, given the state's commitment to religious tolerance expressed in Sukarno's famous Pancasila philosophy.
Singapore, on the other hand, is a classic example of big things in small packages: it has the second-highest GDP per capita in the world after Luxembourg, and its economy is consistently ranked as the most open, least corrupt, and most business-friendly on the planet.
Singapore's long-term economic strategy is increasingly premised on closer ties with China, symbolized by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which Singapore ratified in 2021. When Pope Francis meets with Singapore's leader, he will also be opening another clandestine channel of communication with China at a time when relations between Rome and Beijing appear to be slowly moving toward the normalization goal long sought by the Vatican.
Meanwhile, the Pope's pastoral responsibilities will be at their most crucial during the middle part of the trip, when he will visit Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea.
Officially, a staggering 97% of East Timor's population of 1.34 million are Catholic, and Francis faces the challenge of convincing them that his campaign for reconciliation with Jakarta's former rulers will not come at their expense.
He will also be tasked with addressing the unresolved sexual abuse crisis, particularly that of Bishop Carlos Ximenes Bello, a Nobel laureate who remains a national hero for leading the country's independence. Bishop Bello was also sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020 for allegedly abusing minors in the 1980s. It is unclear whether a canonical investigation into Bishop Bello is still ongoing or whether he will face further penalties as envisaged in the church's new anti-abuse code.
To critics, such uncertainty seems at odds with the Pope's repeated pledge to transparency.
The visit to Papua New Guinea is an opportunity for the pope to rekindle his dream as a young Jesuit of missionary service himself, to inspire Catholic missionary work in remote areas around the world and to deepen his ongoing reflection on the history of Christian evangelism's checkered relationship with Western colonialism that he has worked hard to overcome.
Of course, only time will tell to what extent Francis can rise to the challenges that such a grueling journey poses, but the very fact that he is trying seems to suggest that this papacy's “Biden moment” — the point when it becomes inevitably clear that the leader can no longer continue — is yet to come.
