Pope Francis’s trip: Asia, a continent of the heart
He dreamed of Asia very early on. While he was a Jesuit student in Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio wanted to embark on a missionary career in Japan. His superiors dissuaded him from doing so because of health problems. Now that he is pope, Francis has continued to show the capital importance he attaches to the continent. The proof is in this 45th pastoral visit – from September 2 to 13, the longest since his election – which will take him from Indonesia to Papua New Guinea, then from East Timor to Singapore. If we exclude his visits to countries in the Middle East or Asia Minor, this is his 7th trip to this continent. As many in eleven years as John Paul II in twenty-seven years of pontificate. This Asian tropism can be explained by personal but above all strategic reasons. It also responds in every way to the priorities of his pontificate.
143 million followers
To return to Asia is, in a way, to walk in the footsteps of one of the most illustrious saints of the Society of Jesus, Francis Xavier (1506-1552), co-founder of the order, who preached the Gospel in Goa, the Moluccas, Japan and even China. It is to continue to write the history of Jesuit missionaries like Matteo Ricci (1552-1610). Above all, “as a good Jesuit, Francis analyzes the world as it is,” notes Father Bernard Holzer, an Assumptionist in the Philippines, where 80% of the population is Catholic. Pragmatic, he sees that the dynamism of Catholicism is on the side of Asia,” after Africa and America. In fact, the continent had 143 million faithful1 in 2023, or one in nine Catholics in the world. The geographical shift of the Church is underway, we must not miss it.
However, Michel Chambon, a theologian and anthropologist based in Singapore and founder of Isac2, does not believe in a “personal whim responding to a logic of market share. It is not the trips of a pope that make converts.” The researcher rather explains this new visit to Asia by the concern to “strengthen communion within the Church and to make the evangelical message accessible to the Asian mentality. Which is no small matter with languages and cultures so different from ours.” Faithful to his desire to go “to the peripheries,” he will visit nations little known to Westerners – Papua New Guinea or East Timor – or countries where “Christians, a minority (like Indonesia and Singapore, editor’s note), are capable, according to him, of creativity and vitality, qualities that, in “the old world”, we have perhaps lost a little”, according to the Italian Vatican expert Iacopo Scaramuzzi.
Visit to four key countries
In detail, the Pope chose countries that correspond to his long-standing priorities. Singapore, the most religiously diverse country in the world; Indonesia, a nation with the largest Muslim community on the planet but with moderate Islam; Timor, the most uniformly Catholic country; Papua, with great linguistic diversity. If we add to this the ecological concern – Papua is suffering from climate change and rising sea levels – we understand that the choice of these countries is not random.
Singapore is a special case. The city-state has “negotiated its role as mediator between the Western world and China very well,” Michel Chambon analyzes. “It is a very special little entity with global ambitions. From this point of view, Singapore and the Holy See are in the same fight.” The Pope’s remarks in this archipelago will be listened to carefully by Beijing, with whom Rome has increased its efforts at normalization in recent years. In 2022, the Holy See renewed its historic agreement concluded in 2018 on the thorny issue of the appointment of bishops in China. Is a future trip to this country realistic? In any case, Francis repeated, on August 9, his wish to go there one day.
1) World Christian Database, by Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo (Brill, 2023).
2) Initiative for the Study of Asian Catholics.
