Pope Francis has begun the first papal trip to Asia in 15 years, arriving in Seoul on Thursday in an effort to boost the Roman Catholic church in the region.
The 77-year-old pontiff will preach messages of spirituality in a continent where consumerism is virtually a religion. In the five-day visit to South Korea, the leader of 1.2bn Catholics is also expected to make overtures to North Korea, stressing peace and reconciliation on the divided peninsula.
The trip has already offered a rare chance for cordiality between the Holy See and China, where the Communist party does not allow Catholics to accept the pontiff’s authority.
Pope Francis’s decision to send a goodwill telegram to Chinese president Xi Jinping, and Beijing’s to allow him to overfly its airspace, prompted talk in China of a possible detente between Beijing and the Vatican, whose relations have been increasingly fraught in recent years.
“Upon entering Chinese air space, I extend my best wishes to your excellency and your fellow citizens, and I invoke divine blessings of peace and wellbeing upon the nation,” the telegram said.
Global Times, the English version of the Communist party newspaper People’s Daily, said the papal flight could presage warmer relations, pointing out that in 1989, Beijing refused to allow Pope John Paul II to cross Chinese airspace on his way to South Korea.
The pope was greeted at the airport in South Korea by President Park Geun-hye, along with descendants of 18th and 19th-century Korean martyrs and relatives of the victims of April’s Sewol ferry disaster. He left the airport in a local compact car, reflecting his preference for small vehicles instead of the bulletproof “popemobiles” used by his predecessors on foreign trips.
The trip marks the first papal visit to South Korea in a quarter of a century and Pope Francis’s third overseas trip, following visits to Brazil and the Middle East. He has been keen to visit Asia, where Catholicism, while a minority religion compared with Buddhism and the Protestant evangelical church, is growing fast – more Catholics are baptised in Asia every year than in traditionally Christian Europe. He will visit Sri Lanka and the Philippines in January.
“Any person realises the weight of Asia in the world of tomorrow, and also who is in charge of evangelisation looks at Asia, where Christianity is a minority, and there is space for evangelisation,” said Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman.
One of the main reasons for the Asian tour is to celebrate Asian Youth Day, which thousands of young Catholics from more than 20 countries are expected to attend.
However, the event was clouded by news that about half of more than 100 Chinese who had planned to attend were unable to because of a “complicated situation inside China”, according to event organisers.
China’s Communist party has long-viewed organised religion as a threat to its grip on power and Beijing has attempted to co-opt faith by incorporating the five recognised religions – Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam and Daoism – into the State Administration for Religious Affairs. China’s official statistics report only 28m Christians, most of them Protestants, but Church estimates range as high as 80m.
The event will not be attended by North Koreans either, in spite of an invitation from the South Korean Catholic church. Shortly before the pope’s arrival in Seoul, North Korea fired three short-range rockets into the seas off its east coast, in protest at the joint US-South Korea military drill due to start on Monday.
Asia has emerged as an important region for the Vatican – the future of the Catholic church amid falling global church attendance.
In an interview in June with Italian daily newspaper Il Messaggerro, Pope Francis said: “The Catholic church in Asia holds promise. Korea represents a lot . . . As per China, it is a great cultural challenge. A very big one.”
Catholics are a minority in South Korea but they have grown fast over the past half-century, from just 1 per cent of the 50m population to more than 10 per cent.
Pope Francis is scheduled to host a ceremony in Seoul on Saturday to beatify 124 Korean martyrs and will hold a mass in Seoul’s main cathedral on Monday, where the congregation is expected to include former sex slaves for Japanese soldiers and relatives of the ferry victims.
Additional reporting by Giulia Segreti in Rome
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