Pope Francis arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Tuesday for the first leg of his marathon trip to Asia-Pacific.
“I think this is the longest (trip) I’ve ever done”the Pope told reporters accompanying him.
After being greeted by religious leaders as he stepped off the plane, the 88-year-old pope took a few hours of rest at the Vatican embassy.
His official visit begins this Wednesday with a meeting with outgoing President Joko Widodo.
The pontiff begins his tour in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world (242 million, or 87% of the population). There are some eight million Catholics, or less than 3% of the population.
His visit will focus on Islamic-Christian dialogue, with an interreligious meeting on Thursday in the presence of representatives of the six official faiths (Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism).
On Friday, the Argentine Pope will continue his trip to Papua New Guinea and East Timor, before concluding it on September 13 in Singapore.
After Paul VI in 1970 and John Paul II in 1989, he is the third pope to visit Indonesia.
This visit “is very important to convey a message and show the world that religious harmony is guaranteed and has been implemented,” stressed the spokesman for the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Sunanto, on Monday.
However, “there are divisions within the Catholic Church itself. Some leaders think that good interreligious dialogue is all well and good, but we will not go further than peaceful coexistence,” Michel Chambon, a theologian and anthropologist and researcher at the National University of Singapore, explained to AFP.
Observers have pointed to growing discrimination against religious minorities, particularly Christians in some areas, and there have been calls for the government to take action. In August, the Journalists’ Union for Diversity (Sejuk) recorded eight cases of religious freedom violations, including violence against places of worship, building permit denials and assaults, its director, Ahmad Junaidi, said.
The trip, the Pope’s 45th abroad, was originally planned for 2020 but had to be postponed due to the Covid pandemic.