(8 Sep 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
AGENCY POOL
Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea - 8 September 2024
1. Various of Indigenous man performing
2. Various of Indigenous performers waiting for Pope Francis
3. Various of Pope Francis arriving in golf cart and saluting the crowd
4. Various of crowds
5. Pope Francis being wheeled onto stage for the mass
6. Faithful looking on
7. Pope Francis sitting
8. Crowds
9. Various of Indigenous performers singing and preparing for traditional dances
10. Pope watching
11. Various of Indigenous group performing traditional dances as the pope looks on
STORYLINE:
Pope Francis honoured the Catholic Church of the peripheries on Sunday as he celebrated Mass in Papua New Guinea before heading to a remote part of the South Pacific nation with a ton of humanitarian aid to deliver to the missionaries and faithful who live there.
An estimated 35,000 people filled the stadium in the capital Port Moresby for the morning Mass.
It began with dancers in grass skirts and feathered head dresses performing to traditional drum beats as priests in green vestments processed up onto the altar.
In his homily, Francis told the crowd that they may well feel themselves distant from both their faith and the institutional church, but that God was near to them.
Francis was being transported by an Australian military aircraft and was bringing with him one ton of humanitarian aid, including medicine, clothes and toys for children, according to Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni.
Francis was himself travelling to a distant land on Sunday, flying into remote Vanimo, on Papua New Guinea’s northwest coast, to meet with the small Catholic community there served by missionaries from his native Argentina.
Eight suitcases of medicine and other necessities had been prepared by one of the Argentine missionaries, the Rev. Alejandro Diaz, during a recent trip to Rome and left with the Vatican to bring in on the cargo plane, the ANSA news agency reported.
Francis has long prioritized the church on the “peripheries,” saying it is actually more important than the centre of the institutional church. In keeping with that philosophy, Francis has largely shunned foreign trips to European capitals, preferring instead far-flung communities where Catholics are often a minority.
Vanimo, population 11,000, certainly fits the bill. Located near Papua New Guinea’s border with Indonesia, the coastal city is perhaps best known as a surfing destination.
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 practice the faith along with traditional Indigenous beliefs, including animism and sorcery.
Francis is the second pope to visit Papua New Guinea, after St. John Paul II visited first in 1984, then in 1995 to beatify Peter To Rot, a Catholic layman who was declared a martyr for the faith after he died in prison during World War II.
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