‘Sow seeds of love’: Pontiff calls on faithful to overcome divisions

Catholic News Service

Pope Francis embarked this month on the longest foreign trip of his papacy, a long-planned four-nation apostolic visit to Southeast Asia and Oceania.

Among his goals, according to one of the cardinals traveling with the pope, was to “encourage Catholics in all the contexts in which they find themselves.”

Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, told Fides, his dicastery’s news agency, in an interview published Aug. 27 that the duration and breadth of Pope Francis’ trip was not meant as a stunt, but was “an act of humility before the Lord who calls us — an act of humility and obedience to the mission.”

Pope Francis focused on interreligious dialogue, missionary work and the fair treatment of immigrants as he visited Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore from Sept. 2-13. The emphasis on missionary work focused on the legacy of the missionaries who first shared the faith and, in many cases, built networks of schools and hospitals.

Care for creation was another big theme of the visit, particularly because all four countries are island nations exposed to the dangers of rising sea levels.

Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Vatican foreign minister, told the Italian magazine L’Espresso before the apostolic visit began that the trip “incarnates” Pope Francis’ constant call for Catholics to go out to the “peripheries.”

The trip, he said, does so “certainly from a geographical point of view, but also in light of the great cultural and religious diversity of the countries he will visit. From this perspective, the trip represents the concern and closeness of the Holy Father to everyone — Catholics and non-Catholics — based on the conviction that we are ‘fratelli tutti’” — all brothers and sisters.

The pontiff’s journey began Sept. 2 when he set off from Rome for Jakarta, Indonesia. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim nation, and Catholics account for only about 3% of the population. The country also boasts of having more than 300 ethnic groups with dozens of languages.

While in Indonesia, Pope Francis met with migrants and refugees assisted by Jesuit Refugee Service, orphans cared for by Dominican sisters and elderly and sick people. He also held an interreligious meeting at Southeast Asia’s largest mosque and visited some of the social and charitable works being run by Catholic Indonesians.

His only public Mass in the country, which came before he flew to Papua New Guinea the next day, took place in Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Stadium on
Sept. 5. Before tens of thousands of Catholics, he said that even members of the most remote, smallest and poorest Christian communities are called to share the Gospel and to do so, first, by the way they live.

In his homily, Pope Francis urged Indonesian Catholics “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.”

“In this way,” he said, “you will spread the fragrance of hope around you.”

Reaching out to all

On Sept. 6, Pope Francis arrived in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Unlike Indonesia, where Christians are a small minority, in Papua New Guinea an estimated 98% of the population is Christian. According to Vatican statistics, Catholics represent about 31% of the nation’s
8.2 million people.

Papua New Guinea is known as a land of hundreds of ethnic groups living in remote areas and speaking their own languages; however, one-third of the population lives below the poverty line, and the nation has been plagued by crime and gang violence for decades.

In an afternoon devoted to the Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea Sept. 7, the pope visited with some of the most vulnerable members of society, the Catholics who care for them, and with the country’s bishops, priests, religious, seminarians and catechists.

He started at the Caritas Technical Secondary School in Port Moresby, meeting some 800 students as well as children who were living on the streets and children and adults with disabilities who are assisted by the Callan Services network.

Pope Francis continued his focus on youth before leaving Papua New Guinea on Sept. 9, returning to Sir John Guise Stadium in Port Moresby where he had celebrated Mass the day before. His second visit was to spend time with an estimated 10,000 young people and to hear their concerns.

About 60% of Papua New Guinea’s population is under the age of 25.

Pope Francis repeatedly interrupted reading his prepared text to ask the young people questions and have them shout their replies, telling them, “I don’t hear you!”

His questions included: Do you want harmony or confusion? How many languages do the people of Papua New Guinea speak? Can a young person make mistakes?

And — while not exactly following the prepared text — he insisted that young people need each other, they need their grandparents and they need Jesus.

People must “learn a common language, the language of love,” he said, because the words people use can divide them or even become weapons that destroy families.

“Break down divisions, do not close yourselves within your own group,” he said. Instead, “go out to meet others and form friendships and then dream together, walk together, build together.”

“Dear young people,” he told them, “it is my hope that you learn the language of love and thus transform your country, because love brings about change, makes you grow and opens paths to the future.”

Pope Francis’ next stops on his trip were Timor-Leste, the only nation on his itinerary where Catholics are the majority (the Vatican estimates that 96% of the population belongs to the church), which he visited from Sept. 9-11; and Singapore, where Buddhists comprise the largest religious group and Christians account for almost 19% of the population, from Sept. 11-13.