Pope Francis yesterday arrived in Muslim-majority Indonesia, the first stop in his four-nation tour of the Asia-Pacific that would be the longest and farthest of the 87-year-old’s papacy.
The head of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics touched down in capital, Jakarta, for a three-day visit devoted to interreligious ties, and would then travel to Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.
The 12-day tour would test the pontiff’s increasingly fragile health, but he is often energized by being among his flock and he emerged from the 13-hour flight smiling and waving.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I thank you for coming on this journey. I think it is the longest one [flight] I have done,” he told reporters aboard his chartered plane after landing, according to an Agence France-Presse journalist.
He disembarked in Jakarta in a wheelchair to an honor guard, greetings by Indonesian officials, including the religious affairs minister, and a traditional bouquet from two children.
The pontiff was then picked up from the red carpet by a civilian Toyota car, choosing a modest vehicle over one of luxury typically used by world leaders. He had no official engagements scheduled yesterday following the long flight from Rome, but the Vatican said he hosted a meeting with a group of orphans, migrants and homeless people at its Jakarta mission shortly after he arrived.
The pope is scheduled to meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo today in the first major set piece of his visit to the world’s most-populous Muslim-majority country.
“This is a very historic visit,” Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, told reporters.
“Indonesia and the Vatican have a similar commitment to peace and brotherhood,” he said.
Catholics represent fewer than 3 percent of the population of Indonesia — about 8 million people, compared with the 87 percent, or 242 million, who are Muslim.
However, they are one of six officially recognized religions or denominations in the nominally secular nation, including Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism.
Tomorrow, Francis is to meet representatives of all six at Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia and a symbol of religious co-existence.
It is linked via a “tunnel of friendship” to the cathedral across the road, where Christians in recent days have been taking selfies with a life-sized pope cutout.
He would then host a Mass and deliver a sermon at Indonesia’s 80,000-seat national soccer stadium.
Despite Indonesia’s official recognition of different faiths, there are concerns about growing discrimination, including against Christians, with local Catholics hoping the pope would speak out.
However, Michel Chambon, a theologian at the National University of Singapore, said the pope would press a wider message he had already delivered in other Muslim-majority countries, from Iraq to Bahrain, Turkey and Morocco.
The visit “is not really aimed at Catholics in Indonesia,” but is intended to highlight the global importance of Islamic-Christian dialogue, he said.
That message was already being felt by some in Jakarta.
“We enjoy it because when it’s our religious events, they [Catholics] also show tolerance to us,” said Ranggi Prathita, a 34-year-old Muslim who has been selling customized pope T-shirts. “We all respect each other.”
At the Istiqlal Mosque, Pope Francis is to sign a joint declaration with its grand imam focusing on “dehumanization” through the spread of conflict, as well as environmental degradation, the Indonesian bishops’ conference said.
Francis has repeatedly urged the world to do more to combat climate change and mitigate its effects — including rising sea levels, which threaten Jakarta. Indonesia has experienced terrorist attacks over recent decades, including radical Islamist bombings on Bali in 2002.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS