Pope Will Turn Spotlight on Asia With Trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/world/asia/pope-francis-heightens-vaticans-attention-to-asia.html

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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis left Monday for his second trip to Asia, where he will deliver a message of peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka, a country shaken by a decades-long civil war, and then visit the Philippines, the Vatican said on the eve of his visit.

The Holy See’s attention to Asia dates back centuries, but Francis has made the region a new priority, with two visits in less than six months, moderating a more Eurocentric vision of the church that has prevailed in recent years.

In addition to looking to heal divisions in Sri Lanka, Francis will offer consolation to the people of the Philippines, who suffered a devastating typhoon in 2013, the pope and Vatican officials said.

On Monday, Francis called his trip to Asia a sign of his “interest and pastoral concern for the people of that vast continent.”

“I wish to voice yet again the desire of the Holy See to offer its own contribution of service to the common good, to harmony and social concord,” Francis said in his annual address to the diplomats assigned to the Vatican.

Some envision an increasing political role for the Vatican in Asia, as Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state, has spoken openly of proposing solutions for peace in the many open conflicts around the world.

That expectation was heightened after the Vatican’s years of diplomatic efforts registered a major victory last month, when it was credited with playing a crucial role in the breakthrough between the United States and Cuba.

In his comments to diplomats, the pope also said, “In particular, I express my hope for a resumption of dialogue between the two Koreas, sister countries, which speak the same language.”

However, Vatican watchers see little opening for a similar kind of mediating role in Asia, as many of the political situations in the region are extremely complicated and the Vatican’s presence is not as longstanding as in America.

Moreover, the neighboring Middle East and China are two very delicate grounds for the Vatican, and its mediation would not necessarily be seen as neutral and beneficial.

Still, a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said, “Asia is one of Francis’ priorities.”

The Rev. Bernardo Cervellera, editor in chief of AsiaNews, a missionary news agency close to the Vatican, said the trip’s itinerary underscored the pope’s kinship with followers in the developing world as the first pope from the global south.

“For the global economy and politics, these are two peripheral countries, but they both are very much of interest to Francis,” he said. “He believes that we need to look at the world from the peripheries to understand it, and there he goes.”

While he may be seeking to steer clear of politics, Francis will nonetheless be confronted with a major political shift in Sri Lanka upon his arrival.

There, he will shake hands with Maithripala Sirisena, who was elected president last week with a liberal and democratic agenda, after the decade-long and increasingly controlling presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The pope’s visit will start in Sri Lanka, where he is canonizing the Blessed Joseph Vaz, soon to be Sri Lanka’s first saint, and meeting the local clergy as well as other religious leaders.

In a first for a pope, he will visit Madhu’s shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, at the center of the former conflict zone of the bloody civil war between the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan Army.

Francis will then fly to the Philippines, the largest Catholic outpost in Asia, where he will celebrate a Mass and dine with survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Tacloban area in 2013. Vatican watchers anticipate that the pope will speak about environmental issues.

In the region, the pope is much awaited, and augmented safety measures will be in place. The Filipino police are said to be ready to evacuate the pope with aircraft in case his motorcade is hampered by the expected large crowds — an event that occurred during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Manila in 1995.

Nonetheless, in his usually warm and humane fashion, Francis plans to have long car drives in five different open-air vehicles so that many people will be able to see him up close.

“To me, the theme of an intercultural evangelization is crucial in this trip,” Gian Luca Potestà, professor of the history of Christianity at Milan’s Cattolica University, said in a phone interview.

“He will canonize a local missionary, someone who made an effort to deliver the Gospel through local languages and cultures, careful to social justice and mercy,” he added. “This is one of the pope’s main messages — that Christianity is not based on ethnicity or identity, but is a universal peace factor.”

Many observers noticed how Francis is tracing the steps of Pope Paul VI, with his trip to the Holy Land and his recent meeting in Turkey with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.

The last papal trip to the region was in the 1990s, when John Paul II, the first pontiff to travel extensively all over the world, attended World Youth Day in the Philippines.

Francis has taken six international trips, starting with Brazil, where he attended an international meeting of young Catholics. He then visited Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan; South Korea; Albania; the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France; and Turkey.

His travels reflect his oft-stated belief in the universality of the church, underscored most recently when he named 15 new cardinals coming from 14 countries last week.

Francis is scheduled to visit the United States in September, for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, and he is likely to deliver a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, although no official announcement has been made so far.

“For a non-European pope it is easier to see the world and Christianity in a non-Eurocentric perspective, and easier for people all over the world to perceive him as such,” said the Rev. Carlo Pioppi, professor of church history at Santa Croce University in Rome.

“He understands and knows both cultures,” he added, “but does offer a non-European vision sitting in Europe; this is his great strength.”