JAKARTA: Pope Francis was set to meet Indonesia’s president on Wednesday after the 87-year-old appeared in good health and strong spirits when he arrived in the Muslim-majority nation to launch a gruelling tour of the Asia-Pacific.
The head of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics is on a three-day visit to Indonesia devoted to interfaith ties before he travels to Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore on the longest trip of his papacy.
There are concerns about the impacts of the 12-day tour on his health.
But the pontiff appeared to start strongly as he offered smiles when he arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday morning, then met a group of orphans, migrants and homeless people in the afternoon.
“I thank you for coming on this journey, thank you for the company. I think it is the longest one (flight) I have done,” he told reporters after his 13-hour flight from Rome.
The pope will on Wednesday meet President Joko Widodo, more popularly known as Jokowi, at the presidential palace in the first major set piece of his tour.
He will then give a speech to officials and diplomats, where he is expected to touch on religious harmony in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.
“This is a very historic visit,” Jokowi, who leaves office next month, told reporters Tuesday.
“Indonesia and the Vatican have a similar commitment to peace and brotherhood.”
After meeting Jokowi, the pontiff will hold a private meeting with members of the Society of Jesus — the Jesuit order to which he belongs — at the Holy See’s mission in Jakarta.
Catholics represent fewer than three percent of the population of Indonesia — about eight million people, compared with the 87 percent, or 242 million, who are Muslim.
But they are one of six officially recognised religions or denominations in the nominally secular nation, including Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism.
Interfaith ties are the central theme of this stopover and he is due to host a meeting Thursday with representatives from all six religions at the Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia and a symbol of religious co-existence.
He will sign a joint declaration with the mosque’s grand imam focusing on “dehumanisation” through the spread of conflict, as well as environmental degradation, according to the Indonesian bishops’ conference.
But before that he will try to energise the local Catholic faithful on Wednesday afternoon with an address at Jakarta’s cathedral, which sits across the road from the mosque.
The cathedral, linked to the mosque by a “tunnel of friendship”, was rebuilt at the end of the 19th century after a fire and in recent days Christians have been taking selfies with a life-sized pope cutout there.
The pope will then end his day with a meeting with young people who are part of a global network of schools aimed at helping disadvantaged children, which he established in 2013.
The pope will on Thursday host an interfaith meeting and the main event of his Jakarta stopover — a mass at the country’s 80,000 national football stadium, which Catholics are expected to pack out.
The trip to Indonesia is the third ever by a pope and the first since John Paul II in 1989.
Originally planned for 2020 but postponed due to the Covid pandemic, the visit takes place just three months before his 88th birthday.
He had not travelled abroad since visiting Marseille in France in September last year. Accompanying him to Indonesia are his personal doctor and two nurses, but Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said that was standard procedure and no extra precautions had been taken.
