Skip to main content

Ailing Pope Francis to embark on Asia trip, his longest ever, in September

Pope Francis will travel to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore from September 2-13, the Vatican said on Friday, announcing his first overseas trip of the year and the longest of his 11-year papacy.

The Asia trip has been on the papal agenda for some time, but there had been doubts on whether the 87-year-old pontiff would embark on it given his increasing frailty, with a record of skipping engagements due to health problems.

His last international journey was a two-day stay in Marseille, France in September. In November, he pulled out of a trip to the COP28 climate conference in Dubai because of a lung inflammation.

Francis is now scheduled to be in Jakarta between Sept 3-6, Port Moresby and Vanimo between Sept 6-9, Dili September. 9-11 and Singapore Sept 11-13, his spokesman said in a statement.

Vietnam, which had been suggested by the pope and Vatican officials as a possible further destination during the nearly two-week long Asia trip, was not mentioned.

In recent months, the pope has been suffering on and off from what have been described as a cold, bronchitis and influenza, and he needs a wheelchair or a cane to move around due to a knee ailment.

His agenda this year also foresees Italian day trips to Venice on April. 28, Verona on May 18 and Trieste on July 7, and a visit to Belgium whose dates have not been confirmed, but expected in the second half of September.

The Argentine pope, the first from the so-called Global South, has made reaching out to Asia one of the priorities of his pontificate, during which the Vatican has struck a historic, yet contested, deal with China on bishop appointments.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation and its 8 million Catholics represent about 3 per cent of the total population. Timor-Leste, along with the Philippines, are Asia’s only predominantly Catholic countries.

In Singapore, Catholics comprise about 7pc of residents aged 15 or above, according to a 2020 census, while in Papua New Guinea about 26pc of the population are Catholics, according to a religious freedom report by the US State Department.



from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/DqVkauN
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘A war out there’: Maple Leafs survive shootout thriller in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY — Whew. They needed this one, even if they didn’t wholly deserve it. For a Monday night in Salt Lake City, the stakes felt unusually high for the sagging, road-weary Toronto Maple Leafs .  Heading into their inaugural game at Delta Center, the Leafs had dropped three straight, blown a couple leads, slipped out of first place, and  distracted  the fan base by propositioning their best player with a trade.  Worse: Their process hasn’t been tight for a couple weeks. Mistakes have crept in. Speed is giving their defence issues. And their razor-sharp goaltenders have begun to look human. Head coach Craig Berube held an intense team meeting Sunday, following Saturday’s 7-4 outclassing in Denver. Multiple players spoke up. Captain Auston Matthews said they’d reached look-in-the-mirror time. “The really bad games have a good way of being the biggest learning experiences,” thoughtful goaltender Joseph Woll said, following Monday’s slump-snuffing, nail-b...
Post a Comment
Read more

A diary of (near) default - 2023 was a year of economic uncertainty in Pakistan

Despite having little in common, even our political parties could agree on one thing: Pakistan’s economic situation was dire in 2023. The year saw Pakistan go through a long and rocky road to finding some semblance of economic stability — if it can even be called that — while weathering political and social turmoil. Pakistanis also experienced a double whammy this year: the one-two punches of the worst economic crisis in decades and all-time high inflation. Add to that the gut punch of the aftermath of the catastrophic floods of 2022 began to settle in. Flood victims receive boiled rice from relief workers, after taking refuge on a motorway, following rains and floods during the monsoon season in Charsadda, Pakistan on August 27, 2022 — Reuters In 2023, according to the World Bank , over 39.4 per cent of the population fell below the poverty line, which means over 12.5 million people are living in meagre conditions. Additionally, 8.5 million people face acute food insecurity due ...
Post a Comment
Read more