KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Pope Francis wrapped up the largest, farthest trip of his pontificate last week, which encapsulated his position as a simultaneous spiritual and political figure.
His 12-day mission took him from a mosque in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, to two stops in Papua New Guinea and onwards to Timor-Leste. He wrapped up his trip in Singapore. Large crowds greeted him wherever he went. Half of the population of Timor-Leste is estimated to have attended his mass in Dili.
At 87, the now wheelchair-bound pontiff demonstrated that he is, if anything, more plainspoken than ever. For the most part, he used the trip as effectively a bully pulpit, calling out issues of peace and conflict hiding in plain sight and which, for reasons of present-day geopolitics and diplomatese, are rarely tackled as briskly or brusquely. So, it was only when matters turned to China that the Pope turned coy.
The Pope began his four-country swing in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country with a large-sized Christian minority. A little over 10% of the population — some 30 million — are registered as Christian and nine million of those are Catholic. The country is home to the world’s largest Catholic seminary.
Here, the Pope’s aim was two-fold. First was fostering better relations between Christianity and Islam. While Indonesia holds itself up as an exemplar of religious comity — the country’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and its motto translates as “unity in diversity” — this is not a perfect story.
Inter-group clashes with religious dimensions have punctuated Indonesian history. Often conflicts don’t end but linger, including several that flared violently along religious lines when Indonesia nearly split at the seams following the end of former President Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998.
The U.S. has raised a range of religious freedom concerns with the Indonesian government, including “actions against religious minorities ... convictions for blasphemy and defamation of religion … and the application of sharia to non-Muslims.” To highlight the issue, the Pope visited Jakarta’s largest mosque. Together with its grand imam, they issued a written declaration stating that religion can never be the foundation for violence. Indonesia has good internet, but whether militants and opportunists in this constantly connected nation will heed their joint call is another matter.
Climate change has been an enduring feature of Francis’ pontificate. It is an accelerant of conflict in each of the countries he visited. Indonesia is no exception. In the clearest demonstration of its untoward effects, Indonesian authorities are planning to move the capital from Jakarta to a purpose-built site in Borneo because the city is quite literally sinking into the ground.
From Jakarta, the Pope flew to Papua New Guinea, a resource-rich but thinly governed country where the reach of Church institutions is much further than that of the state. Christianity is inscribed deeply within Papua New Guinea’s institutions, cultures and political rhetoric; 96% of the population is Christian with Catholicism being, marginally, the largest denomination. Prime Minister James Marape is a Sabbath-observing Seventh Day Adventist and his stated goal is to making his country the world’s richest black Christian nation.
Papua New Guinea is becoming of ever more strategic significance to the United States, and a setting for a new tussle between it, along with its partner Australia, and China for presence and influence.
Papua New Guinea and the U.S. signed a defense co-operation agreement last year; the Pacific’s most populous nation has been designated as a focus for the U.S.’s Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability, which aims to offer a new, inter-agency approach to tackling the drivers of conflict and fragility.
In his address to assembled leaders from politics and civil society and the diplomatic corps in Port Moresby, the Pontiff praised the country’s diversity but left his audience in no uncertain terms where its roots of conflict and instability lay. He called for fairer treatment of workers in a country where three quarters live in multidimensional poverty. He told Papua New Guinea’s politicians to build better institutions to tackle the problems in their midst. He called for a “definitive” solution to the status of Bougainville; talks to progress the 2019 non-binding referendum in which 97.7% of Bougainvilleans voted to secede are proceeding at a pedestrian pace.
He also drew attention to the intercommunal violence wrecking the internal fabric of the society, contributing to the country’s ingrainedly gloomy reputation as a place where no traveler can easily go. He drew particular attention to the problem of gender-based violence in one of the world’s most dangerous places to be a woman. He met nuns who provided support to the victims of Sorcery Accusation Related Violence (SARV), a growing problem likened to a wildfire in its virulence and intensity.
Strong words. Were his sermons heeded? There’s not much evidence of anything Damascene in terms of attitudinal change thus far. In Enga province, in the country’s highlands, a spate of intergroup violence centered on a major mine broke out, leaving up to 30 dead. Papua New Guinea’s MPs spent the week afterwards continuing their politicking and horse-trading for votes in a “vote of no confidence,” in which Marape ultimately prevailed. Budget season is looming for parliamentarians, which would give them another opportunity to fund the extensive plans that have been developed to tackle domestic violence and SARV.
Francis calls himself the Pope of the peripheries. From Port Moresby he was wheeled onto an Australian military transport to one of the most peripheral parts of this cut-off land. He visited the jungle-fringed town of Vanimo, close to the border with Indonesia’s restive West Papua. In so doing he fulfilled a pledge he made to a fellow Argentine cleric engaging in missionary work in Vanimo and surrounding areas for decades who, during a visit to Rome, asked the Pope to visit. There’s a wider lesson for those engaging in peace and conflict work here. Missionaries tend to stay longer in one place than the fragility consultants, defense advisers and contractors arriving in ever greater number now that Papua New Guinea is garnering ever more attention. What missionaries acquire in doing so — relationships and tenure — are the prerequisites for working effectively in Papua New Guinea, a lesson worth heeding no matter how ostensibly secular the endeavor is.
From the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, Pope Francis flew to the eastern half of the island of Timor, and the newest nation of the 21st century. Timor-Leste is the region’s only Catholic-majority nation. East Timorese revere one of Francis’s predecessors. A visit by John Paul to Dili when it was under Indonesian occupation is credited as playing a role in paving the way for the country to emerge as a nation of its own. In Dili, he lauded progress but noted that the greatest challenge facing its country's leaders was running a country in which the hopes of its people could be fulfilled. He emphasized similar themes to that which he expressed in Papua New Guinea, such as the “social scourges” of alcohol and drugs.
Albeit elliptically, he tackled this dark history within his own institution and those of the country he was visiting. Clergy beloved for their role in the country’s liberation struggle have been found guilty of horrific child abuse. This includes Bishop Carlos Belo — who shared the Nobel Peace Prize award with now East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta. Belo has been under a Vatican-ordered travel restriction and may not return to his homeland. American missionary Richard Daschbach, revered for his role during the occupation, is serving a 12-year sentence in a Timorese prison for molesting disadvantaged girls. While the church booted him, he remains a popular figure in influential quarters.
The visit was also an opportunity to take stock. Timor-Leste used to be a perennial member of countries designated as fragile and conflict-prone, a staple subject in forums and convocations on fragility and conflict. (USIP was closely focused on the country in its early years, for instance). That it is no longer categorized thus is testament to how far the country has come. The Pope’s visit was a reminder that while a lot has been done, there is more to do.
The final leg of the pontiff’s visit was Singapore, which is both a close partner of the United States and enjoys strong ties with China. The city-state is the closest that the Pope got to Chinese-speaking lands. Vatican-China relations have been in a bit of a deep freeze, with simmering tension as to the issue of who is in charge when it comes to matters of church in an authoritarian state. A provisional agreement between the two states on appointing bishops is due for renewal later this year.
It was striking that the Pope did not visit Taiwan even though the two countries have diplomatic relations; the Vatican is one of 14 states which recognize Taiwan. Taiwan is well-known as the beating heart of Chinese-speaking Catholicism and so his decision to skip it may more to a desire to not chill further relationships with Beijing as much as anything else. When asked about China on his return flight, Francis was full of honeyed words, describing China as a “a great country” and one he hopes to visit one day. And just like that, as imperceptibly as Catholics believe water turns into wine, the plainspoken Pope transformed himself into the most long-game playing diplomat.