Francis the globetrotter

Pope Francis has become an active globetrotter over the past two years despite a perceived initial aversion to continuing the tradition of papal travel initiated by John Paul II and continued by Pope emeritus Benedict XVI.

During 2013, Francis made just one journey abroad, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for World Youth Day.

He stepped up his game in 2014, however. In May he visited the Holy Land; in August, South Korea; in September, Albania; and in November, both Strasbourg and Turkey.

This year, it seems, will be no different. Having already completed trips to Sri Lanka and the Philippines in January, a number of other potential voyages are the cards for the year ahead.

These include but are not limited to Bolivia and two as yet unspecified countries in South America, an as yet unnamed African country and, in September, to the US, including a trip to Philadelphia on the occasion of the World Meeting of Families and a speech to the UN in New York.

Brazil

On his first trip abroad, Pope Francis visited Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for World Youth Day from July 23-28, 2013.

This was the only scheduled foreign trip for him that year and had been previously scheduled for his predecessor, Benedict XVI, before his resignation.

Francis was officially welcomed to Brazil during a ceremony at Guanabara palace and met with Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff.

Throughout the celebrations, Francis gathered up to 3.5 million pilgrims to celebrate Mass at Copacabana Beach.

The Church must adopt a more simple approach and be capable of “walking at people’s side”, was one of the strong messages to come from the Pontiff’s visit.

It was fitting that the first Latin American Pope should make his first international trip to his native continent, and he inspired the millions of young people present to share the Gospel with their peers.

The Holy Land

Francis visited Amman, Bethlehem and Jerusalem during his three day trip to the region from May 24 to 26, 2014.

Francis arrived in Jordan on May 24 and after meeting with King Abdullah II, celebrated Mass at Amman International Stadium.

During his trip, the Pope invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres to pray together at the Vatican for peace between their nations.

Later, arriving at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Pope Francis was greeted by Peres and by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There the Pope repeated his invitation to Peres using exactly the same words with which he had invited Abbas.

He urged Israel to stay on the “path of dialogue, reconciliation and peace”, saying “there is simply no other way”.

Also during this trip, Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew met to seek inspiration for Christian unity at the site of Christ’s death and resurrection.

“We need to believe that, just as the stone before the tomb was cast aside, so, too, every obstacle to our full communion will also be removed,” the Pope said during a prayer service at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Vatican had emphasised that the Pope’s meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew was the main reason for his densely packed, three-day visit to the Holy Land. The two leaders were scheduled to meet a total of four times during the visit, whose official logo was an icon of the apostles Peter and Andrew, patron saints of the Churches of Rome and Constantinople, joined in a fraternal embrace.

South Korea

Pope Francis arrived in Seoul Air Base on August 14 to start his five day visit to South Korea on the occasion of the sixth Asian Youth Day.

Upon arrival, Francis was greeted by South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Afterwards, he held a private meeting with the families of victims of the MV Sewol ferry disaster. He later made a speech at the Presidential Office in Seoul stating: “I came here thinking of peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.”

Francis held the first public Mass of his trip on August 15 in front of a 50,000 strong crowd at Daejeon World Cup Stadium where he asked Koreans to “reject inhumane economic models which create new forms of poverty and marginalise workers”.

He beatified 124 Korean Martyrs in Gwangwhamun Square in front of an estimated crowd of 800,000 people on August 16.

Francis concluded his five day visit with a Mass for peace and reconciliation of the divided Korean peninsula in Seoul’s Myeongdong Cathedral.

Turkey

Pope Francis accepted an invitation to visit Turkey at the request of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in September 2014.

This invitation also came from Patriarch Bartholomew I in order to commemorate the feast day of Saint Andrew. Francis arrived at Esenboga International Airport on November 28 where he was met by Turkish dignitaries before he traveled to Anıtkabir, laying a wreath in memory of the Turkish republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Francis then traveled to the Presidential Palace where he met with President Erdogan and gave a speech urging interfaith dialogue to counter fanaticism and fundamentalism and called for a renewed Middle-East peace push, saying the region had “for too long been a theatre of fratricidal wars”.

The following day, Francis visited the Blue Mosque where he prayed silently alongside senior Islamic clerics.

Francis concluded his visit with a liturgy in the Church of St George alongside Bartholomew I, asking for his blessing “for me and the Church of Rome” and also urging the re-unification between the two Churches, telling the Orthodox faithful gathered in St George’s that “I want to assure each one of you gathered here that, to reach the desired goal of full unity, the Catholic Church does not intend to impose any conditions except that of the shared profession of faith”.

Albania

Pope Francis announced that he would make a one day visit to the city of Tirana in Albania “to confirm the Church of Albania in the Faith and bear witness to my encouragement and love for a country that has suffered for so long in consequence of the ideologies of the past”.

The 11-hour visit was the first European trip made by Francis. He said that he had chosen Albania as the first destination because it has set a model for harmony between the various religions by establishing a national unity government that includes Muslims and Orthodox and Catholic Christians.

During his stay, he met Albanian President Bujar Nishani, celebrated Mass in Mother Teresa square in Tirana, and met with religious leaders, including those of the Muslim, Orthodox, Bektashi, Jewish and Protestant faiths.

The Pope encouraged Albania’s religious communities to continue working toward the common good.

“We need each other,” he said, and the “more men and women are at the service of others, the greater their freedom”.

The Pope said Albania was a “land of heroes” and a “land of martyrs” whose people stood firm in the face of oppression and persecution.

It withstood centuries of Ottoman rule, followed by an independence that degenerated into decades of oppressive communist control. The totalitarian regime founded by Enver Hoxha claimed to liberate the people from the constraints of all religions, turning the country into the only atheist nation in the world.

Strasbourg

Pope Francis made a four-hour visit, the shortest made by any Pope abroad, to Strasbourg on November 25, 2014, where he addressed the European Parliament and the Council of Europe.

There, he urged “self-absorbed” European politicians to recover a sense of hope rooted in Christianity and warned that disillusioned voters could turn to extremism.

The Pope also condemned the “throwaway culture” which saw abortion and euthanasia as human rights, rather than an assault on human dignity. Such misunderstandings, he said, must be challenged by a holistic view of the human person.

The Pope said Christianity “does not represent a threat to the secularity of states or to the independence of the institutions of the European Union, but rather an enrichment”.

He said religions could help Europe counter “many forms of extremism” spreading today that were often “a result of the great vacuum of ideals which we are currently witnessing in the West”.

“The time has come for us to abandon the idea of a Europe which is fearful and self-absorbed, in order to revive and encourage a Europe of leadership, a repository of science, art, music, human values and faith as well,” Pope Francis said.

Sri Lanka

Pope Francis visited Sri Lanka on January 13–15 and the Philippines (15–19) this year. In Sri Lanka, the Pope addressed the difficulties of healing after the devastating war between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which ended in 2009.

He urged the country’s multi-ethnic, multi-religious population to promote “human dignity, respect for human rights and the full inclusion of each member of society”.

The Pope greeted well-wishers during a procession in his open-top popemobile on January 13.

Forty brightly decorated elephants were on hand to welcome the Pontiff. Yellow-and-white Vatican flags flew along the roads into the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Later on in the evening, the Pope participated in an
inter-religious meeting, marked by a Buddhist chant and blessings by Hindu and Muslim clerics.

“I hope that interreligious and ecumenical cooperation will demonstrate that men and women do not have to forsake their identity, whether ethnic or religious, in order to live in harmony,” he said.

Pope Francis also canonised Joseph Vaz during his trip, a 17th-century priest credited with keeping Catholicism alive in Sri Lanka during a period of persecution, giving the country its first Catholic saint.

Philippines

In the biggest gathering of Christians ever, Pope Francis addressed more than six million people in the closing Mass of his trip to the Philippines, calling on them to be “outstanding missionaries of the Faith in Asia”.

The turnout was more than double that which assembled at World Youth Day in Rio, and is significantly larger than the record set when Pope John Paul II said Mass in the same place – Manila’s Rizal Park – in 1995, hitherto the largest assembly of Catholics in history.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, thanked Pope Francis on behalf of all the people of Manila, and said that every Filipino wanted to follow him not to Rome but to the peripheries. “We will go,” he said, “where the light of Jesus is needed”.

Before the final Mass, the Pope held morning meetings with religious leaders and young people at the University of St Thomas which is the biggest Catholic university in Asia.

Pope Francis opened his meeting with over 20,000 students by remembering the 27-year-old woman who had died during his visit to Tacloban.

The Pope then listened to several children speak about their experiences of growing up on the streets.

One of the children, 12-year-old Glyzelle Palomar, wept as she told her story and asked why God had allowed children to suffer so much.

A visibly moved Pope Francis replied: “Only when we are able to cry are we able to come close to responding to your question.”

He added that the world needed to learn how to cry with those in need.

“Those on the margins cry. Those who have fallen by the wayside cry. Those who are discarded cry. But those who are living a life that is more or less without need, we don’t know how to cry,” he said.

The previous day, Pope Francis visited a region devastated by Typhoon Haiyan.

The Pope said as soon as he saw the catastrophe caused by the typhoon, he had decided to go to the Philippines.

He was due to have lunch with survivors of the disaster in Tacloban but was forced to cut short his trip due to a tropical storm.

Before he left for Manila, the Pope held an outdoor Mass for about 150,000 worshippers amid strong winds and pouring rains.

During the Mass, the Pope spoke of the terrible impact of Typhoon Haiyan.

He told the faithful that “so many of you in Tacloban have lost everything. I don’t know what to say – but the Lord does… He underwent so many of the trials that you do”.

Typhoon Haiyan, which remains the strongest storm ever recorded on land, created a 7m (23ft) high storm surge, destroying practically everything in its path when it swept ashore on November 8 2013.

More than 14.5 million people were affected in six regions and 44 provinces. About one million people remain homeless.

A national holiday was been declared in the capital for the duration of the Pope’s visit.