On the second leg of his 12-day journey to four countries, Pope Francis will take a six-hour flight Friday morning, Sept. 6, from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, a predominantly Christian country in Oceania.
He is the second pope to visit Papua New Guinea; St. John Paul II visited twice: first in 1984 and then a brief visit on Jan. 16, 1995, for the beatification of the country’s first indigenous martyr, Peter To Rot, a catechist killed by the Japanese during their occupation of the country in World War II.
Unlike in Indonesia, Timor Leste and Singapore, in Papua New Guinea, the pope will not remain only in the capital city. Here the Argentine pope will take a plane ride to Vanimo, the remote capital city of Sandaun Province in the north-westernmost part of the country, to visit a group of priests belonging to the Institute of the Incarnate Word and nuns belonging to the Sisters of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara sisters, all from Argentina. These missionaries, some of whom Francis knows, have been working for 27 years in the city and the surrounding tropical rainforest on a peninsula close to the border with Indonesia, just over 600 miles from Port Moresby. Vanimo can only be reached by boat or plane and is referred to by some as “the periphery of the peripheries.”
During his stay in Papua New Guinea, the pope will give four talks and a homily. The motto for his visit is “Pray,” inspired by the disciples’ request to Jesus: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk 11:1). The centerpiece of the logo for this visit is a cross, depicted in colors meant to evoke Papua New Guinea’s sunrises and sunsets. On the cross, one can see a bird of paradise, which also appears on the flag of Papua New Guinea, representing its independence.
Papua New Guinea is a part of the Commonwealth of Nations, and Pope Francis will begin his visit on Saturday morning, Sept. 7, by making a courtesy call to the governor general, Sir Bob Dadae, who represents King Charles III. Following a private conversation with Sir Dadae, he will address the country’s authorities, representatives of civil society and the diplomatic corps at APEC Haus, a meeting facility built for the 2018 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
In the evening, Pope Francis will greet some 100 homeless children helped by the church and persons with disabilities who are assisted by a faith-based development organization called Callan Services, the largest provider of services to persons with disabilities in P.N.G.
Later that evening, he will greet and speak to the bishops of P.N.G. and the Solomon Islands as well as priests, deacons, seminarians and catechists at the Shrine of Mary Help of Christians. There he will be welcomed by John Ribat, M.S.C., the city’s archbishop and the country’s first cardinal, who was given the red hat by Francis in 2015 and is well known for his concerns about poverty, the environment and climate change, which is causing rising sea levels and the “slow disappearance” of islands in the region.
On Sunday, Sept. 8,Francis will receive the prime minister at the nunciature before celebrating Mass at the Sir John Guise Stadium for 20,000 people.
At 1 p.m., he will take the plane from the city’s international airport and fly to Vanimo, a city with a population of 11,000 people. Two hours later he will greet the faithful of the Diocese of Vanimo at the promenade in front of the Holy Cross Cathedral.
Afterward, he will have a private meeting with the Argentine missionaries at the Holy Trinity Humanities School in Baro, and an hour later take the plane back to Port Moresby.
On Monday, Sept. 9, he will meet and speak to 10,000 young people in the Sir John Guise Stadium before driving to the airport for the farewell ceremony and his flight to Dili, the capital of Timor Leste, the most Catholic country in Asia.
Papua New Guinea comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea—the world’s second-largest island—and its offshore islands in Melanesia. It shares a land border with Indonesia to the west, which makes up the other half of the island. It is close to Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the east.
The island was inhabited for some 45,000 years before the European powers arrived in the 1800s. The Dutch, Germans and British controlled various parts of the island beginning in the late 19th century. In 1919, after World War I, all of what is present-day Papua New Guinea came under Australian control. The territory was occupied by the Japanese during World War II and was then ruled as an Australian colony until the country gained independence on Sept. 16, 1975. It then became an independent nation-state with a parliamentary system of government. It is a member of the Commonwealth, and its monarch today is King Charles III, who is represented by the governor general.
It has a population of around 11 million, made up of some 1,000 tribes, speaking 860 languages, making it the most linguistically diverse country in the world.
The island has immense cultural and biological diversity and is known for its beaches, coral reefs, rainforests and highlands. But, because it is located on the volcanically active Pacific Ring of Fire, it is also afflicted by frequent earthquakes. Earlier this year, on May 24, villages in the Enga province over 370 miles northwest of the capital were hit by a landslide that killed 2,000 people, and Pope Francis expressed his closeness to the people there.
Christianity was introduced to New Guinea in 1847 when a group of Marist missionaries established their first mission on Umboi Island. They were forced to withdraw the following year. In 1852, the Italian Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions re-established a mission on Woodlark Island, but the missionaries encountered sickness as well as resistance from the local people, including violence. The institute’s first martyr, Blessed Giovanni Mazzucconi, was killed in Woodlark in 1855. During World War II, many Catholic and Protestant missionaries, including the German Bishop Josef Lörks, were executed by the Japanese, who accused them of being spies for the United States.
But the blood of the martyrs has laid the seeds for the growth of Christianity in this land, one of the most rural countries in the world (only 13 percent of the population lived in urban areas in 2019), where many are poor and where infrastructure is lacking in many places, even though the land is rich in natural resources. In 2021, Papua New Guinea ranked 154th out of 191 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index.
Seventy percent of the schools on the island are run by Christian churches. The Catholic Church is deeply involved in education in the country where there is a high level of illiteracy, especially among women. It runs 3,385 kindergarten and primary schools, 90 secondary schools and 84 high schools.
While 95 percent of the population profess to be Christian, mostly Protestant (and mainly Lutheran), Catholics count for about 30 percent of the population. On the other hand, “syncretism is a problem here and a lack of strong catechetical formation,” Father José Magadia, the Filipino general counselor for Asia Pacific at the Jesuit Curia in Rome, told America.
The Catholic Church has 19 dioceses, 462 parishes served by 27 bishops, 600 priests (both diocesan and religious), 800 religious sisters, 405 senior seminarians and 3,134 catechists. Members of many missionary orders are working in the country today, including 13 PIME missionary priests and 30 religious sisters continuing the mission started almost 170 years ago. The missionaries from Argentina that Pope Francis will meet in Vanimo came here 27 years ago.
