Pope Francis gives Asia its due

If St. Pope John Paul II from Poland and Pope Benedict XVI from Germany focused on the Western nations, decrying its increasing secularisation, Argentina-born Pope Francis is more interested in the Church beyond a wealthy Europe and an advanced North America.

After all, there is no point in holding on to the Church’s centuries-old Euro-centric orientation as the European Union is trying to keep the Holy See at bay with the 27-member trade body’s pet themes like secularization and inclusion.

By choosing Asia for his longest-ever Apostolic visit, 87-year-old Pope Francis has given a shot in the arm to the Church in the most populous continent whose voting-age cardinals he increased from 9 percent in 2013 to 18 percent in 2024 during the 11-year pontificate, according to UCA News.

Out of 33 Asian cardinals, including Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, the youngest cardinal of the Catholic Church who leads Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbataar in Mongolia, 21 can take part in the papal conclave to elect the new pope.

 With his 12-day trip, Francis is visiting Indonesia, Singapore, and Timor-Leste in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean nation of Papua New Guinea where he will visit the remote coastal town of Vanimo to show his commitment to making the “periphery” a priority.

 The Jesuit pope’s 12-day trip, just three months before his 88th birthday, involves 43 hours of flight time covering a distance of 32,000 kilometers. The grueling voyage involves more than 16 speeches, countless meetings and ceremonies, and public Masses spread across four nations.

With its ethnic, cultural, and religious plurality and social, and economic diversity, Asian nations represent a major challenge for the Universal Church.

In most parts of Asia, Catholics are in the minority and are viewed with suspicion and at times with contempt by majority communities. By contrast, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the Church is growing, are majority Christian regions. However, the Asian Church has managed to put up a steady growth.

 Asia, home to two-thirds of the world's 8.2 billion population, has always fascinated Francis and he has visited the continent six times: South Korea (2014), Sri Lanka and the Philippines (2015), Myanmar and Bangladesh (2017), Thailand and Japan (2019), Kazakhstan (2022), and Mongolia (2023).

 The pope in Indonesia

The pope arrived in Muslim-majority Indonesia and excited Indonesians came in large numbers to see Pope Francis after he landed at Jakarta's Soekarno–Hatta airport on a chartered ITA Airways flight on Sept. 3.

Francis will attend various events in the Indonesian capital Jakarta from Sept. 3 to 6, including a meeting with President Joko Widodo.

Catholics make up a mere 3 percent of the Southeast Asian nation’s 267 million people.

The Christian presence in Indonesia is concentrated in Nusa Tenggara Timur province, where Catholics form 53.73 percent and Protestants make up 36.16 percent, a legacy of European colonization.

The pope will visit Singapore from Sept. 11 to 13 at the last leg of his Apostolic visit.

Singapore has a significant Christian community and a large immigrant population. The city-state is a hub of global banking and finance while Papua New Guinea is a Christian majority nation and Timor-Leste has 98 percent Catholics among its 1.36 million people and is plagued by poverty, unemployment, and low literacy rates.

 With this 45th trip abroad, Francis is here to sow the seeds of an Asian pope.