Pope to visit Southeast Asia

Source: Vatican Media

Pope Francis will make an Apostolic Journey to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore on September 2-13, 2024, the Vatican press office announced on Friday.

The Holy Father accepted the invitations of the Heads of State and local Church authorities to make what will be his 43rd Apostolic Journey abroad.

He is scheduled to leave Rome on September 2 and return on September 13.

Pope Francis will travel first to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, where he will land on September 3 and remain until September 6. He will then fly east to visit Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, and Vanimo on September 6-9. His next stop will be in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, on September 9-11. From there, the Pope will travel to Singapore for a three-day visit on September 11-13.

The full programme of his Apostolic Journey will be published at a later date.

Pope Francis first mentioned the possibility of traveling to the region in December 2023.

In an interview with the Mexican broadcaster N+, he said he hoped to travel to "Polynesia" in August and to his native Argentina later in the year.

Then, in January 2024, the Pope told an interviewer with the Italian newspaper La Stampa that he would visit Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia.

Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-majority country, and Catholics number over eight million, or 3.1 percent of the population.

Around 32 percent of Papua New Guinea's population are Catholic, numbering around two million.

Timor-Leste is overwhelmingly Catholic, accounting for around 96 percent of the population, counting over one million people.

Some 395,000 Catholics live in Singapore, representing around three percent of the population.