To the Ends of the World

POPE Francis may have clocked nearly 45 hours of flying time in less than two weeks during his September 2 to 13 trip to southeast Asia and Oceania, but the 87-year-old pontiff didn’t seem the slightest bit exhausted by what was the longest and farthest trip of his papacy.

Instead, on the 12-hour return flight back from Rome, following his four-country journey that took him to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, the Pope seemed reenergized by a trip that allowed him to highlight some of the signature themes of his pontificate, despite the fact that many here in the Vatican believed the Pope was too old and faced too many health hurdles to undertake such a demanding journey.

As a journalist covering the trip for the National Catholic Reporter, I was one of about 75 members of the press that traveled with the Pope and his entourage for the journey, where we had front row seats for what will certainly be remembered as one of the most memorable outings of his nearly 50 international trips since his election in 2013.

In many respects, it was a trip of stark contrasts: the most-populous Muslim country in the world and the most Catholic nation on earth outside of the Vatican, some of the poorest countries in Asia Pacific, followed by the richest country in the region. All of it, however, was vintage Francis, with him leading by example and showing exactly the world what he thinks the Catholic Church should be about.

A 4-minute speech

In March 2013, just days before his surprise election, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, told his fellow cardinals that “the Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries.”

The next pope, he said, “must be a man who, from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ, helps the Church to go out to the existential peripheries, that helps her to be the fruitful mother, who gains life from ‘the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.’”

It was a four minute speech that later some cardinals would describe as the minute they knew they had found their man to become the next pope. But it also served as a blueprint for much of what has followed since then, and especially on this latest papal journey where an intrepid Pope Francis led by example in witnessing to what a Church that goes to the peripheries and revels in the joy of evangelizing actually looks like.

Indonesia

After a thirteen-and-a-half hour flight from Rome, Pope Francis’ plane touched down in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, where the Pope was greeted by both young children wearing traditional dress and hot temperatures, made worse by the city’s terrible air pollution. In fact, on the papal plane, one of my colleagues gave Francis a small, handheld electric fan for him to use during the trip after reading about how much the city’s heat had bothered Pope Paul VI when he visited Indonesia in 1964.

While the weather made it difficult for those of us reporters on the ground scrambling to chronicle the Pope’s every move, it didn’t distract him from getting straight to the point of his visit, where over the course of three days the Pope extolled Indonesia – the most populous Muslim country on earth – for its long tradition of living harmoniously alongside its minority Catholic neighbors.

In a world marred by conflict and violence, the Pope told Indonesia that they could serve as a model for fraternity and social solidarity. But the Pope wasn’t alone in making this plea. At a historic interreligious gathering at the Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in southeast Asia, Francis was joined by its Grand Imam, Nasaruddin Umar, where the two men signed a joint declaration calling on religious leaders to unite in the fight against climate change and in the defense of human dignity.

“The values shared by our religious traditions should be effectively promoted in order to defeat the culture of violence and indifference afflicting our world,” stated the declaration. “Indeed, religious values should be directed towards promoting a culture of respect, dignity, compassion, reconciliation and fraternal solidarity in order to overcome both dehumanization and environmental destruction.”

Tunnel of friendship

At the end of their time together, the Grand Imam softly kissed the Pope’s head and the Pope kissed the Imam’s hand – a sign of both friendship and deep respect, but also an example for their respective followers. Indeed, the city’s main mosque and the Catholic cathedral have recently been connected through an underground link, known as the “tunnel of friendship,” to offer a permanent reminder of what the two faith leaders are asking of their fellow believers.

Later that same day, the Pope turned his attention to the country’s Catholics, where at a Mass attended by over 100,000 people, the Pope told the faithful to “sow seeds of love, confidently tread the path of dialogue, continue to show your goodness and kindness with your characteristic smile, and be builders of unity and peace.”

“Do not grow weary of dreaming and building again a civilization of peace!” the Pope pleaded. “Always dare to dream of fraternity!”

Papua New Guinea

From Indonesia, the Pope was back on the road again, flying another six hours to the South Pacific island of Papua New Guinea, a country with remarkable natural resources, but incredibly high rates of poverty stemming from gang violence, tribal infighting, corruption and natural disasters.

In many respects, Papua New Guinea – due to its remote location and harsh conditions – is a land that much of the world seems to have forgotten, despite its stunning beauty and incredibly kind people. In some parts of the country, Catholics go weeks or months without even being visited by a priest due to both a shortage of priests and how spread out many of the communities are from one another. But on Sunday, September 8, Francis traveled into the heart of the country and on the edge of the jungle to the tiny town of Vanimo – population 11,000 – to remind Catholics there that they had not been forgotten.

The Pope – who was presented with a traditional feathered headdress – both celebrated the local culture and its customs and traditions, while speaking bluntly about the challenges they face. In a country of over 800 languages – more than any other nation on earth – and more than 600 tribes, the Pope encouraged them to “love one another” and let their differences be reason for celebration and a reflection of God’s beauty, not a cause for division.

At another event – this time a Mass in the capital city of Port Moresby – Francis reflected on the Gospel, where “we see Jesus going to territories on the peripheries.”

“This is the nearness of Jesus, who comes to touch our lives and remove every distance… by his coming Jesus announced peace to those who were far away,” he said. It was not lost on the more than 35,000 who turned out for the occasion, nor the journalists traveling with Francis, that this Pope was doing the same thing. 

East Timor

At the next stop of East Timor, the world’s most populous Catholic country on earth outside of the Vatican, Francis celebrated a historical Mass with over 600,000 attendees — more than half the population of the entire country.

Nearly one-third of East Timor’s citizens were killed in the quarter-century long war for independence with neighboring Indonesia, but the Catholic Church was a constant ally for the Timorese, which finally received complete independence in 2002. The Pope’s Mass served as a belated celebration, and tears filled the eyes of many of the elderly Mass attendees, who recalled Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1989 amid the bloody war. Now, another Pope had come to both uplift their freedom and their faith.

With more than 60 percent of the country under the age of 30, the Pope prayed for a “future of hope and joy, where oppression and war will be banished forever” and not to lose their bright smiles, which give visible testimony to their dreams and aspirations. 

Singapore

From East Timor – one of the poorest countries in Asia — the Pope traveled to his final nation: the city-state of Singapore, which is the most religiously diverse country in the world, and the wealthiest in Asia.

While Singapore’s towering skyscrapers and modern technology offered a stark contrast from the Timorese capital, where most of the roads still remain unpaved, Francis kept his message the same: Singapore’s tremendous development and economic successes means the country has a special obligation to lift all of its citizens up, especially the poorest and marginalized.

There, he praised the city’s “great and bold architecture” – and said that, in the same way that skyscrapers reach upward to the sky, Singaporeans are called to “build up” in love.

That love, the Pope said, should be marked by a deep respect for all people, regardless of their race, belief, or whatever makes them different from ourselves.”

As we boarded the papal plane for the long journey back to Rome, I thought back to Cardinal Bergoglio’s words before his election as Pope Francis, where he called on the Church to become more defined by Gospel values and focused on the peripheries. I also thought of Christ’s commission to his disciples to go to the ends of the earth and “make disciples of all nations.” Nearly 11 years into his papacy, this missionary pope has shown that he hasn’t lost sight of that original command, and is doing just that.