In Asia and Oceania, Challenges Await Pope

If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis' upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest, farthest, and most challenging of his pontificate, it's that he's bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home. Francis will clock 20,390 miles by air during visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled. The trip begins Monday and runs through Sept. 13, the AP reports. The destinations and issues that could arise in them—against a backdrop of the Vatican's relations with China—include:

• Indonesia: Francis loves gestures of interfaith harmony, and there could be no better symbol at the start of his trip than the underground "Tunnel of Friendship" linking Indonesia's main Istiqlal mosque to its Catholic cathedral. Francis will partake in an interfaith gathering with the grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar. The pope has made improving Christian-Muslim relations a priority and has often used his travels to promote his agenda of committing religious leaders to work for peace and tolerance, and renounce violence in God's name. Indonesia is home to the world's largest Muslim population and has enshrined religious freedom in its constitution, officially recognizing six religions. Francis is likely to celebrate this tradition of religious tolerance as a message for the rest of the world.

• Papua New Guinea: Francis was elected pope in 2013 largely after an extemporaneous speech to his fellow cardinals in which he said the Catholic Church must go to the "peripheries" to reach those who need God's comfort the most. When Francis travels deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, he will be fulfilling one of the marching orders he set out for the future pope. Few places are as remote, peripheral, and poverty wracked as Vanimo, a coastal town on the main island of New Guinea. There, Francis will meet with missionaries from his native Argentina working to bring Christianity to a largely tribal people who still practice pagan traditions alongside the Catholic faith. Francis will likely reflect on the environmental threats to vulnerable and poor in places like Papua New Guinea, such as deep sea mining and climate change, while pointing to the diversity of its 10 million people who speak some 800 languages and are prone to tribal conflicts.
• East Timor: When John Paul visited East Timor in 1989, he sought to console its overwhelmingly Catholic population that had suffered under Indonesia's brutal and bloody occupation for 15 years already. "For many years now, you have experienced destruction and death as a result of conflict; You have known what it means to be the victims of hatred and struggle," John Paul told the faithful during a seaside Mass in Tasi-Toli, near Dili. Another legacy that will confront Francis is that of the clergy sexual abuse scandal: Revered independence hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo was secretly sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020 for sexually abusing young boys.
• Singapore: Francis has used several of his trips to send messages to China. His visit to Singapore, where three-quarters of the population is ethnically Chinese and Mandarin is an official language, will give him another opportunity to reach out to Beijing as the Vatican seeks improved ties for the sake of China's estimated 12 million Catholics. "It's a faithful people, who lived through a lot and remained faithful," Francis told the Chinese province of his Jesuit order in a recent interview. Francis is also stepping into a protracted maritime dispute as China has grown increasingly assertive with its presence in the South China Sea.

(More Pope Francis stories.)