VATICAN CITY — If proof were needed that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest, most distant and most difficult of his pontificate, it’s that he is bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country schedule while continuing his work at home.
Francis will travel 20,390 miles by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing all of his previous 44 foreign trips and making it one of the longest papal journeys ever, in terms of days on the road and distance traveled.
It’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, who uses a wheelchair, who lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection when he was young and who had to cancel his last trip abroad at the last minute (to Dubai in November to attend the U.N. climate conference) on doctors’ orders.
But Francis is continuing with this trip, initially planned for 2020 but postponed because of Covid-19. He is taking with him his medical team, made up of a doctor and two nurses, and is taking the usual health precautions on site. But, in a new development, he is adding his personal secretaries to the traditional Vatican delegation, made up of cardinals, bishops and security personnel.
The long journey recalls the world travels of St. John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, although East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his historic 1989 trip.
Following in the footsteps of John Paul II, Francis emphasizes the importance of Asia for the Catholic Church, as one of the few places where the Church is growing in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations. He also points out that this complex region also embodies some of his main priorities as pope: the emphasis on interreligious and intercultural dialogue, the protection of the environment and the insistence on the spiritual component of economic development.
Here’s a look at the trip and some of the issues likely to be discussed, with the Vatican’s relations with China ever present in the background in a region where Beijing wields enormous influence.
Indonesia
Francis loves gestures of fraternity and interfaith harmony, and there could be no better symbol of religious tolerance at the start of his trip than the underground “Friendship Tunnel” linking Indonesia’s main Istiqlal Mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.
nbcnews
