April 12 (UPI) — Pope Francis will tour three Southeast Asian countries and one in Oceania later this year, the Vatican announced on Friday.
Francis will embark on the Apostolic Journey from Sept. 2-13 beginning with a visit to Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim-majority population, and will then travel to Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore.
Pope Francis will be the first pope to visit Indonesia in 35 years. Pope John Paul II made a stop there in 1989.
“He accepted the invitation of the heads of state and local church authorities to make what will be his 43rd Apostolic Journey abroad,” the Vatican said in a statement.
Pope Francis will land in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia on Sept. 3 and stay through Sept. 6. Catholics make up 3.1% of Indonesia’s population, roughly eight million people. Indonesia has approximately 275 million people.
“Hopefully, with this visit, Indonesian Catholics will become more courageous in voicing the truth and become an example for people of other religions in terms of truly religious life, namely love above all, as the pope always emphasizes,” Indonesian Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo told the Catholic News Agency.
From Indonesia, the pope will fly to Papua New Guinea’s capital of Port Moresby for a stay from Sept. 6-9, where 32% of the population is Catholic. He will then travel to Dili, Timor-Leste on Sept. 9-11, where 96% of its population of more than 1 million is Catholic.
His final stop will be Singapore from Sept. 11-13, where 3% of the population is Catholic.
The trip for Pope Francis, who has faced health issues over the past several years, follows the same track as a trip planned in 2020 that was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Singapore was not part of the 2020 plans.