Pope Francis travelled to the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea on Sunday to celebrate the Catholic Church of the peripheries, taking with him a ton of medicine, musical instruments and a message of love for the people who live there.
Francis flew in a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 transport plane from the South Pacific nation’s capital, Port Moresby, to Vanimo, on the north-west coast, where he met the local Catholic community and missionaries from his native Argentina who have been ministering to them.
A crowd of an estimated 20,000 people gathered on the field in front of Vanimo Cathedral, singing and dancing when Francis arrived, and he promptly put on a feathered headdress that was presented to him.
Speaking from a raised stage, he praised the church workers who go out to try to spread the faith, but he urged the faithful to work closer to home at being good to one another and putting an end to the tribal rivalries and violence that are a regular part of the culture in Papua New Guinea.
He urged them to be like an orchestra, so that all members of the community come together harmoniously to overcome rivalries.
Doing so, he said, will help to end personal, family and tribal divisions “to drive out fear, superstition and magic from people’s hearts, to put an end to destructive behaviours such as violence, infidelity, exploitation, alcohol and drug abuse, evils which imprison and take away the happiness of so many of our brothers and sisters, even in this country”.
It was a reference to the tribal violence over land and other disputes that have long characterised the country’s culture but have grown more lethal in recent years.
Francis arrived in Papua New Guinea to urge an end to the violence, including gender-based violence, and for a sense of civic responsibility and co-operation to prevail.
The Pope had started the day with a Mass in front of an estimated 35,000 people at the Sir John Guise Stadium in Port Moresby. Dancers in grass skirts and feathered headdresses performed to traditional drum beats as priests in green vestments processed to the altar.
In his homily, Francis told the crowd they may well feel themselves distant from both their faith and the institutional church, but that God is near to them.
“You who live on this large island in the Pacific Ocean may sometimes have thought of yourselves as a far away and distant land, situated at the edge of the world,” he said. “Yet today the Lord wants to draw near to you, to break down distances, to let you know that you are at the centre of his heart and that each one of you is important to him.”
Francis has long prioritised the church on the “peripheries”, saying it is actually more important than the centre of the institutional church.
In keeping with that philosophy, he has largely shunned trips to European capitals, preferring instead far-flung communities where Catholics are often a minority.
Vanimo, which has a population of 11,000, is certainly remote. Located near Papua New Guinea’s border with Indonesia, where the jungle meets the sea, the coastal city is perhaps best known as a surfing destination.
Francis, history’s first Latin American pope, has also had a special affinity for the work of Catholic missionaries. As a young Argentine Jesuit, he had hoped to serve as a missionary in Japan but was prevented from going because of his poor health.
Now, as Pope, he has often held up missionaries as models for the church, especially those who have sacrificed to bring the faith to faraway places.
Father Martin Prado, an Argentine missionary from the Institute of the Incarnate Word religious order, is credited with having invited Francis to visit Vanimo.
As he waited for him to arrive on Sunday, he told reporters the “crazy” story of how he accompanied a group of Vanimo parishioners to Rome in 2019, and ended up securing an audience with the Pope after his parishioners insisted they wanted to give him some gifts.
Fr Prado, who has spent the last 10 of his 36 years working as a missionary in Vanimo, said he wrote a note, left it for the Pope at the Vatican hotel where he lives, and the next day received an email from Francis’s secretary inviting his group in.
“I invited him, but he wanted to come,” Fr Prado said. “He has a big heart for people. It’s not just words, he does what he says.”
Fr Prado said some people deep in the interior of the diocese, in the jungle where cars have yet to arrive, need clothes and for them a plate of rice and tuna fish “is glorious”.
Francis was taking medicine, musical instruments and toys, the Vatican said.
Fr Prado said he is also helping to build a new secondary school – half of the children of the diocese are unable to go to high school because there simply is not enough room for them.
The event had a very Argentine flavour to it: On the stage was a statue of the Virgin of Lujan, the beloved patron of Argentina who is particularly dear to Francis and whose name also graces the local girls’ school.
When Francis met the nuns and missionary priests privately after the event, they served him mate, the Argentine tea.
There are about 2.5 million Catholics in Papua New Guinea, according to Vatican statistics, out of a population in the Commonwealth nation believed to be around 10 million. The Catholics practise the faith along with traditional indigenous beliefs, including animism and sorcery.
On Saturday, Francis heard first-hand about how women are often falsely accused of witchcraft, then shunned by their families.
In remarks to priests, bishops and nuns, he urged church leaders in Papua New Guinea to be particularly close to these people on the margins who have been wounded by “prejudice and superstition”.
“I think too of the marginalised and wounded, both morally and physically, by prejudice and superstition sometimes to the point of having to risk their lives,” he said.
He urged the church to be particularly close to such people on the peripheries, with “closeness, compassion and tenderness”.
Francis’s visit to Vanimo was the highlight of his visit to Papua New Guinea, the second leg of his four-nation tour of Southeast Asia and Oceania.
After first stopping in Indonesia, on Monday Francis will head to East Timor and will end his visit to Asia in Singapore later in the week.
