JAKARTA, Indonesia — Pope Francis begins his visit to Indonesia on Wednesday with a busy first day, meeting with political and religious leaders and setting the rigorous pace for an 11-day, four-nation journey through tropical Asia and Oceania that will test his endurance and health.
The first item on Pope Francis’ agenda was a meeting at the presidential palace with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, followed by an opening address to government officials and the diplomatic corps. Francis is expected to convey his hopes for continued interfaith harmony in a country with a small Catholic minority and the world’s largest Muslim population.
In the afternoon, Pope Francis will meet with Indonesian clergy and nuns at Jakarta’s Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral for his traditional speech of encouragement to the local church. Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Catholic seminary and has long been a major source of priests and nuns for the Catholic Church, though their numbers have not kept pace with the growth of the overall Catholic population.
Pope Francis’ final appointment of the day was a meeting with schoolchildren who participate in after-school programs run by a foundation he has supported since his time as Argentine archbishop.
Pope Francis arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday to begin the longest, most distant and most difficult journey of his pontificate, given his many health problems. Aged 87, he uses a wheelchair, regularly suffers from bronchitis and has undergone multiple surgeries for intestinal problems.
By the end of the trip on September 13, Francis will have traveled 32,814 kilometers (20,390 miles) to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, one of the longest papal trips in history, both in terms of days on the road and distance traveled.
Francis appeared in good shape and good spirits at the start of the trip, meeting reporters at the back of the papal plane on the overnight flight from Rome and greeting each of them. Often, when his knees bother him, he sits down and asks reporters to come greet him on the plane, but he spent half an hour walking up and down the aisles this time.
In Indonesia, Francis will seek to support the Catholic community, which makes up just 3% of the population of some 275 million, while seeking to encourage closer ties with the country that is home to the largest Muslim population.
The highlight of Pope Francis’ first stop will be his participation Thursday in an interfaith meeting at Jakarta’s iconic Istiqlal Mosque with representatives of Indonesia’s six officially recognized religions: Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Catholicism and Protestantism.
The mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia, sits opposite the capital’s main Catholic cathedral and the two are so close together that the Muslim call to prayer can be heard during mass. They are connected by an underground “friendship tunnel” that acts as a symbolic bridge between the two religions.
While Pope Francis is keen to highlight Indonesia’s tradition of religious tolerance, the country’s image as a moderate Muslim nation has been tarnished by outbreaks of intolerance. In 2021, a pair of Islamist militants blew themselves up outside a packed Catholic cathedral on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi during a Palm Sunday Mass, injuring at least 20 people.
Upon Pope Francis’ arrival, Amnesty International said it hoped his visit would encourage an end to acts of intolerance and discrimination against minority groups and genuinely promote respect for religious freedom enshrined in the country’s constitution.
In a statement, Amnesty International noted that between January 2021 and July 2024, at least 123 cases of intolerance were recorded, including rejections, closures or destruction of places of worship and physical attacks. The perpetrators are believed to come from a variety of backgrounds, including government officials, residents and community organizations.
“The Pope’s visit has an important role to play in encouraging Indonesia to end intolerance and discrimination against all minority groups. Freedom of religion is a right protected by the Indonesian Constitution,” said Usman Hamid, Executive Director of Amnesty International Indonesia.
Asia, like Africa, has long been seen as the future of the Catholic Church, both in terms of the number of baptized faithful and the number of men and women who decide to become priests or nuns. In Asia, the numbers are on the rise while longtime Catholic strongholds such as Europe and the Americas are experiencing long-term declines in the number of Catholics and those entering religious life.
Although Indonesia can by no means compete with the Catholic-majority Philippines or India in terms of the total number of baptized Catholics or priests, the number of men studying to become priests here continues to grow as the number of seminarians in Asia as a whole has begun to level off, or even decline, in recent years.
According to Vatican statistics as of December 31, 2022, the latest year for which data is available, there were 5,903 Catholic priests in Indonesia for a population of 8.29 million Catholics. While the number of seminarians studying for the priesthood in Asia has declined since 2017, including in the Philippines and India, Indonesia has continued to add more, with 4,024 seminarians in 2022 compared to 3,777 in 2017.
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