Pope Francis traveled to the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea on Sunday to celebrate the Catholic Church on the peripheries, bringing with him a ton of medicine, musical instruments, and a message of love for the people who live there. Francis flew aboard a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 transport plane from Port Moresby to Vanimo, on the northwest coast of the South Pacific nation. There, Francis met with the local Catholic community and the missionaries from his native Argentina who have been ministering to them, the AP reports.
For an Argentine pope who marveled in 2013 at having been chosen from the "end of the Earth" to lead the church, it was a voyage to another end of the Earth on the longest, farthest trip of Francis' pontificate. He has previously traveled to the edge of the Arctic (to apologize to the Inuit people for church abuses), and into the Peruvian Amazon (to draw attention to its plight), and to the plains of Ur, Iraq (to boost Christian-Muslim ties). But even by his standards, Sunday's trip to remote Vanimo was extraordinary. A crowd of an estimated 20,000 people gathered on the field in front of the Vanimo cathedral singing and dancing when Francis arrived, and he promptly put on a feathered headdress that had been presented to him.
In remarks from a stage, Francis praised church workers who go out to try to spread the faith. But he urged the residents of Vanimo to work at home at being good to one another. 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, would help to "drive out fear, superstition and magic from people's hearts, to put an end to destructive behaviors 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." It was a reference to the tribal violence over land and other disputes that have long characterized the country's culture but have grown more lethal in recent years.
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Francis was elected pope largely on the strength of a speech he gave to fellow cardinals in 2013 about the need for the church to go out to the "peripheries" where people need God most. Vanimo, population 11,000, is near Papua New Guinea's border with Indonesia, where the jungle meets the sea, and is for the most part only reachable by plane or boat. The 2.5 million Catholics in Papua New Guinea practice their faith along with traditional Indigenous beliefs, including animism and sorcery. Papua New Guinea was the second leg of the pope's tour of Southeast Asia and Oceania. After first stopping in Indonesia, Francis heads on Monday to East Timor and then goes to Singapore later in the week.
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