Pope Francis wraps up 12-day historic Asia visit with message of tolerance

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Pope Francis wrapped up his ambitious 12-day Southeast Asia tour on Friday by praising Singapore’s tradition of interfaith harmony and with the same message of tolerance that he delivered at the start.

He visited the country with the world’s largest Muslim population – Indonesia, with about 242 million – and the country with the highest percentage of Catholics outside the Vatican itself – East Timor, with some 98 per cent.

Francis, 87, presided over a gathering of young people from some of the religious traditions that are present in Singapore, where mosques, Buddhist temples and Christian churches.

He expressed concern for the country’s rapidly aging population, and its migrant workforce, but louded Singapore’s efforts to confront climate change, calling them a model for other countries.

He ditched his speech and urged the youths to take risks, even if it meant making mistakes. However, he came back to the topic at hand to make his main point about the need for people of different faiths to engage in constructive dialogue rather than insist on the righteousness of their particular beliefs.

“All religions are a path to arrive at God,” he said. “They are like different languages to arrive there. But God is God for all.”

Francis was in Singapore to encourage its Catholics, who make up about 3.5 per cent of the population of just under 6 million, while highlighting Singapore’s tradition of interfaith coexistence. According to a 2020 census, Buddhists make up about 31 per cent of the population, Christians 19 per cent and Muslims 15 per cent, while about a fifth of the population claimed no religious belief whatsoever.

History's first Latin American pope offered an overwhelmingly positive message in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, praising Singapore's economic development and making only one public appeal: that it treat its immigrant workers with dignity and a fair wage.

Francis’s journey took him to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and East Timor before Singapore. This was the longest he trip had been on since becoming head of the Catholic Church in 2013.

In Indonesia, he urged the country to live up to its promise of “harmony in diversity” and fight religious intolerance in a visit that included meetings with outgoing president Joko Widodo and president-elect Prabowo Subianto. He greeted Catholic priests, nuns and seminarians at Jakarta’s main cathedral.

After a meeting with the grand imam of Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, the two issued a joint call to fight religiously inspired violence and protect the environment.

The Pope traveled to the remote city of Vanimo in Papua New Guinea, where he brought about a tonne of medicine, clothing, musical instruments and toys to donate. He was greeted by some 20,000 people singing and dancing on the field in front of the Vanimo cathedral, where he donned a feathered headdress presented to him.

Overwhelmingly Catholic East Timor greeted Francis with huge crowds, with people jamming his motorcade route from the airport into town cheering as he smiled broadly and waved from his open-backed pickup truck. Nearly half the country showed up for him to celebrate Mass.

The 32,814km by air clocked for the trip make it the longest and farthest of his pontificate, and one of the longest-ever papal voyages in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.