Pope Heads to Papua New Guinea after Final Mass in Indonesia before an Overflow Crowd of 100,000

The Associated Press

18:34 JST, September 6, 2024

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Pope Francis wrapped up his visit to Indonesia on Friday after celebrating Mass before an overflow crowd of 100,000, a final celebration before heading to Papua New Guinea for the second leg of his 11-day journey through Southeast Asia and Oceania.

The 87-year-old pope had no official events Friday beyond a farewell ceremony and the six-hour flight to Port Moresby, giving him something of a break after a packed three-day program in Jakarta.

The visit culminated with a jubilant Mass on Thursday afternoon before a crowd that filled two sports stadiums and an overflowed into a parking lot.

“Don’t tire of dreaming and of building a civilization of peace,” Francis urged them in an ad-libbed homily. “Be builders of hope. Be builders of peace.”

The Vatican had originally expected the Mass would draw some 60,000 people, and organizers predicted 80,000. But the Vatican spokesman quoted local organizers as saying more than 100,000 had attended.

“i feel very lucky compared to other people who can’t come here or even had the intention to come here,” said Vienna Frances Florensius Basol, who came with her husband and a group of 40 people from Sabah, Malaysia but couldn’t get into the stadium.

“Even though we are outside with other Indonesians, seeing the screen, I think I am lucky enough,” she said from a parking lot, where a giant TV screen was erected for anyone who didn’t have tickets for the service.

While in Indonesia, Francis sought to encourage the country’s 8.9 million Catholics, who make up just 3% of the population of 275 million, while also seeking to boost interfaith ties with the country boasting the world’s largest Muslim population.

In the highlight of the visit, Francis and the grand imam of Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest, signed a joint declaration pledging to work to end religiously inspired violence and protect the environment.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis’ agenda is aligned with more of his social justice priorities. The poor, strategically important South Pacific nation is home to more than 10 million people, most of whom are subsistence farmers.

Francis will be travelling to remote Vanimo to check in on some Catholic missionaries from his native Argentina who are trying to spread the Catholic faith to a largely tribal people who also practice pagan and Indigenous traditions.

The country, the South Pacific’s most populous after Australia, has more than 800 Indigenous languages and has been riven by tribal conflicts over land for centuries, with conflicts becoming more and more lethal in recent decades.

History’s first Latin American pope will likely refer to the need to find harmony among tribal groups while visiting, the Vatican said. Another possible theme is the country’s fragile ecosystem, its rich natural resources at risk of exploitation and the threat posed by climate change.

The Papua New Guinean government has blamed extraordinary rainfall for a massive landslide in May that buried a village in Enga province. The government said more than 2,000 people were killed, while the United Nations estimated the death toll at 670.

Francis becomes only the second pope to visit Papua New Guinea, after St. John Paul II touched down in 1984 during one of his lengthy, globetrotting voyages. Then, John Paul paid tribute to the Catholic missionaries who had already been trying for a century to bring the faith to the country.

Papua New Guinea, a Commonwealth nation that was a colony of nearby Australia until independence in 1975, is the second leg of Francis’ four-nation trip. In the longest and farthest voyage of his papacy, Francis will also visit East Timor and Singapore before returning to the Vatican on Sept. 13.