Holy shot: A man having his photo taken with a cutout of Pope Francis at Jakarta Cathedral ahead of his visit this week. — AP
IF any evidence is 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 programme while keeping up with work back home.
Francis will clock 32,814km by air during his Sept 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste 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 distance travelled.
That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip at the last minute (to Dubai in November to participate in the UN climate conference) on doctors’ orders.
But Francis is pushing ahead with this trip, originally planned for 2020 but postponed because of Covid-19. He’s bringing along his medical team of a doctor and two nurses and taking the usual health precautions on the ground.
But in a novelty, he’s adding his personal secretaries into the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.
The long trip recalls the globetrotting St John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, although Timor-Leste was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his landmark 1989 trip.
By retracing John Paul’s steps, Francis is reinforcing the importance that Asia has for the Catholic Church, since it’s one of the few places where the church is growing in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations.
And he is highlighting that the complex region also embodies some of his core priorities as pope – an emphasis on interreligious and intercultural dialogue, care for the environment and insistence on the spiritual component of economic development. — AP
