September 4, 2024 // National

Pope Arrives in Indonesia at Beginning of Four-Nation Tour

Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNS) – Pope Francis landed in Jakarta on Tuesday, September 3, after a 13-hour flight from Rome and was greeted by the Religious Affairs Minister of Indonesia and two children in traditional dress who offered him flowers.

After such a long flight, the pope was scheduled to take the remainder of September 3 to rest and try to get used to the five-hour time difference between Rome and Jakarta.

However, before resting, Pope Francis visited with migrants and refugees assisted by Jesuit Refugee Service, orphans cared for by Dominican sisters, and elderly and sick people assisted by the Community of Sant’Egidio.

The visit on September 3 took place at the apostolic nunciature where the pope is staying while in Indonesia.

At the beginning of the flight on Monday, September 2, the 87-year-old pope thanked reporters for accompanying him on the longest trip of his pontificate; he planned to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore before returning to Rome on Friday, September 13. Although relying heavily on the seat backs and his cane, the pope walked the entire length of the ITA A330, greeting each of the 75 journalists aboard.

Matteo Bruni, Director of the Vatican Press Office, told reporters to expect Pope Francis to talk in Indonesia about the importance of fidelity to preserving the unity in diversity enshrined in the country’s constitution.

While Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, it also is home to Catholics and other Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus. The country also boasts of having more than 300 ethnic groups with dozens of languages.

The pope’s schedule includes an interreligious meeting at Southeast Asia’s largest mosque as well as opportunities to meet with the nation’s Catholics and to visit some of the social and charitable works they carry out in Jesus’ name.

In Indonesia, like the three other island-nations on the trip – Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore – care for the environment is also expected to be a key theme, Bruni told reporters ahead of the trip. In fact, Indonesia is in the process of building a new capital city, Nusantara, because Jakarta is sinking below sea level from the excessive withdrawal and use of groundwater to meet the needs of its growing population.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization and a member of the papal entourage, told Fides, his dicastery’s news agency, that the pope is not trying to set a record or prove a point about his stamina. Rather, he said, subjecting himself to the rigors of such a long trip “is an act of humility before the Lord who calls us – an act of humility and obedience to the mission.”

Pope Francis “wants to encourage Catholics in all the contexts in which they find themselves,” the cardinal said in the interview published on Tuesday, Aug. 27. “Asia is home to two-thirds of the world’s population. The majority of these people are poor. And there are many baptisms among the poor. Pope Francis knows that there are many poor in those areas, and among the poor there is an attraction to the figure of Jesus and to the Gospel, even in the midst of war, persecution, and conflict.”

Along with care for creation, interreligious dialogue and the fair treatment of immigrants are expected to be issues the pope touches on in each of the four countries. He is also likely to call on local Catholics to pick up the missionary mantle, building on the work of the missionaries who first shared the faith and, in many cases, built networks of schools and hospitals.

While Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim nation, almost all the people of Papua New Guinea are Christian, and about 30 percent of them are Catholic. Timor-Leste is the only nation on the itinerary where Catholics are the majority; the Vatican estimates that 96 percent of the population belongs to the Church. In Singapore, Buddhists make up the largest religious group – about 31 percent – followed by 20 percent of the population claiming no religious belief; Christians account for almost 19 percent of the population, and Muslims about 15 percent.

Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Vatican foreign minister, told the Italian magazine L’Espresso that the trip “incarnates” Pope Francis’ constant call for Catholics to go out to the “peripheries.”

The trip to Asia and Oceania, he said, does so “certainly from a geographical point of view, but also in light of the great cultural and religious diversity of the countries he will visit. From this perspective, the trip represents the concern and closeness of the Holy Father to everyone – Catholics and non-Catholics – based on the conviction that we are ‘fratelli tutti’” – all brothers and sisters.