The pope of the peripheries has more work to do in Asia

“A people that teaches its children to smile is a people that has a future.” Energised by the joyous crowd of 600,000 Pope Francis returned to a central theme of hope and optimism.  Almost half of  Timor Leste’s 1.4 million population thronged to a Holy Mass on the Esplanade of Taci Tolu last Tuesday and it had clearly delighted the aged pontiff.

If there is a central theme and purpose to papal visits it can be said to be promoting hope, optimistically affirming our common humanity, and urging believers of all faiths to boldly work together to build a better future for all.  How this message resonates says much about the host countries.

On Friday, at his final meeting in Singapore before departing for the airport and the charted ITA Airways flight home to Rome, Francis set aside his prepared remarks and challenged the assembled youth to be bold. “What’s worse: Make a mistake because I take a certain path, or not make a mistake and stay home? … A young person who doesn’t take a risk, who is afraid of making a mistake, is an old person.” the 87-year-old pontiff prompted the crowd. “I hope all of you go forward. Don’t go back. Don’t go back. Take risks.”

The previous Sunday, Francis, the ‘pope of the peripheries’ had put those words into practice when he insisted on flying to the township of Vanimo on the remote northern coast of Papua New Guinea to visit a community served by a small group of missionaries from his native Argentina.  “You are doing something beautiful, and it is important that you are not left alone,” Francis told a gathering, outside the town’s wood-panelled parish, that the Vatican estimated at 20,000.

There were no lifts at the modest Vanimo Airport to accommodate the largely wheel-chair bound pontiff so he made the noisy and uncomfortable trip in a Royal Australian Airforce C-130 transport plane and was rolled down the load ramp.

Around 90 percent of Papua New Guinea’s estimated 12 million people identify as Christian and one quarter of these as Roman Catholic, meaning that PNG is home to around 2.5 million Catholics.  This contrasts sharply with Timor Leste, which is now one of the most Catholic places on the planet, outside the Vatican, with 97 percent of its people identifying as Catholic.  Singapore, on the other hand, is said to be one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world.  Of its roughly six million people 17 percent are Christian, including 400,000 Catholics, 18 percent Muslim, 8 percent Hindu, and 26 percent Buddhist.

In wealthy, diverse, Singapore the challenge is not so much inter-religious harmony as social justice. As Indonesia’s leading news magazine Tempo quoted the Pope: “I hope that special attention will be paid to the poor and the elderly … as well as to protecting the dignity of migrant workers."  Addressing about 1,000 politicians and civil and religious leaders at the National University of Singapore, he added, "these workers contribute a great deal to society and should be guaranteed a fair wage.”

Tempo notes that there are around 1.1 million foreigners on work permits in Singapore earning less than S$3,000 (US$2,300) per month.

The papal visits to PNG, Timor Leste, and Singapore went well.  The risks were low and feel-good rewards high.  Rather more was a stake in the first papal visit to Indonesia in 35 years.

Francis has made a priority of engaging with the Muslim world.  In 2019, he visited the United Arab Emirates and led the first Holy Mass on the Arabian Peninsula.  He also joined with the the grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque, Ahmed el-Tayeb, a leading Sunni cleric, on February 4 to sign a joint declaration on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together”.  The United Nations subsequently declared February 4 the International Day of Human Fraternity.

Indonesia was to have been the destination for the next papal visit in the Muslim world but COVID-19 intervened.  Still, Pope Francis pressed ahead with a visit to Iraq in 2021, despite the pandemic and political instability, visiting the ancient city of Ur, birthplace of Abraham.  The visit gave him an opportunity to meet Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Al-Husayni Al-Sistani in Najaf, a holy shrine for Shiite Muslims. After the meeting with Ahmed el-Tayeb in Abu Dhabi, the meeting with Al-Sistani, one of the world’s leading Shiite clerics, completed papal engagement in the Arab world

The visit to Indonesia can be seen as a capstone on Francis’ life work as pontiff. Home to 285 million people – 87 percent, or 248 million of them, followers of Islam – Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation in the world.  Around 12 percent of all Muslims in the world are Indonesian, and large Muslim communities in South and Central Asia mean that most Muslims are Asian.

Sheikh Yahya Cholil Staquf, the general chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest independent Muslim organisation, greeted Pope Francis with the words “Enjoy the country of unity, the country of tolerance and brotherhood.”

A bold interfaith statement, the Istiqlal Declaration signed by Francis and Nasaruddin Umar, Grand Imam of Istiqal Mosque in Jakarta, urged “interreligious dialogue to be recognised as an effective instrument for resolving local, regional and international conflict” and called for action on the “ongoing environmental crisis,” that “has become an obstacle to the harmonious coexistence of peoples.”

Prior to the signing on the second morning of the papal visit the two leaders had visited the ‘Tunnel of Friendship’ (Terowongan Silaturahmi), the 90-foot underpass that connects the compounds of the Our Lady of the Assumption cathedral and Masjid Istiqlal.  The ‘Independence Mosque’, which accommodates 200,000 worshipers, is the largest mosque in the Southern Hemisphere and is proudly celebrated as the work of the Christian architect Friedrich Silaban, son of a Batak Lutheran pastor.  Silaban also designed the Bung Karno Stadium eight kilometres to the south, where Francis celebrated a papal mass with 80,000 later that afternoon.

The twelve-day papal tour is the longest ever undertaken by Pope Francis. And it is unlikely to be surpassed. By the end this year the Pope will have turned 88 and become the third oldest pope in history.

It is clear that Francis would dearly like to visit China, home to around 12 million Catholics, and India, home to and even larger community of Catholics.  No pope has every visited China, where the Church is split between a church under Beijing-appointed bishops, and a troubled underground congregation.

Paul VI visited Mumbai in 1964, after the ground-breaking visit to the Holy Land that began the era of modern papal visits, becoming the first pontiff to depart Italy in more than 150 years.  And John Paul II visited in 1986 and 1999.  The complicated politics of Hindutva fundamentalism have stymied Francis’ efforts to visit the Asian giant but a cordial encounter at this year’s G7 meeting in Apulia, southern Italy, saw Prime Minister Modi tweeting on X that he had issued a personal invitation for the pontiff to visit: “Met Pope Francis on the sidelines of the @G7 Summit. I admire his commitment to serve people and make our planet better. Also invited him to visit India. @Pontifex”.  In 2021,Modi had an earlier warm encounter with Francis at the Vatican, the hour-long discussion was the first meeting between and Indian prime minister and a pope since 2000.

A papal visit to India would rank alongside this month’s visit to Indonesia as a crowning achievement in the life of Pope Francis.  Many pray that he will have that opportunity, but whatever is to come this unprecedented 12-day visit to Southeast Asia is a remarkable accomplishment for the ‘pope of the peripheries’.

Greg Barton is Research Professor in Global Islamic Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute (ADI), Deakin University. He is alsoSenior Fellow, Hedayah, Abu Dhabi, and adjunct professor at the School of Global and Strategic Studies, University of Indonesia

Image: Pope Francis with young people at interreligious dialogue event in Singapore's Catholic Junior College. Vatican News.