Pope Francis welcomed to remote Papua New Guinea as he seeks ‘to break down distances’

Pope Francis travelled to Vanimo, on Papua New Guinea’s remote north-west coast, after celebrating a mass in the capital of Port Moresby in front of an estimated audience of 35,000 people.

The pope received an enthusiastic welcome in the town located on a peninsula close to the border with Indonesia. He was greeted by members of the small Catholic community who are served by missionaries from his native Argentina.

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As he arrived in the remote region, the pope was accompanied by almost a tonne of humanitarian aid and toys to deliver to the faithful and missionaries who live there.

“You are doing something beautiful, and it is important that you are not left alone,” Francis told the crowd, which the Vatican estimated at 20,000, in a meeting outside the town’s one-storey, wood-panelled cathedral parish.

“You live in a magnificent land, enriched by a great variety of plants and birds,” said the pope. “The beauty of the landscape is matched by the beauty of a community where people love one another”.

The pope’s visit to Vanimo is likely to be the highlight of his visit to Papua New Guinea, the second leg of his four-nation tour of south-east Asia and Oceania. After first stopping in Indonesia, Francis heads on Monday to East Timor and then wraps up his visit in Singapore later in the week.

In Vanimo, the small town came to a standstill with shops shuttered and roads closed off to host the pope for his three-hour visit. Father Augustine Prado told the Guardian that he and his brother had invited the pope to visit Vanimo in 2019, when they travelled on a pilgrimage to Rome.

“My brother, Father Martin, invited him,” Prado said, adding they had been “friends since 2019”.

The Prado brothers and their sister, Sr Cielos, are part of a small group of Argentine missionaries and sisters who look after the Baro parish, a school complex and a home for girls who have been victims of violence, which the pope has been helping for years.

Baro is a small village close to Vanimo and near the border Papua New Guinea shares with Indonesia.

Locals lined the main highway to Baro, which was decorated with flowers and banners, as they hoped to catch a glimpse of the pope.

Authorities gave special permission for some to travel from nearby Indonesia to see the pope in Baro. Pelagus Laguwan and a group of faithful from the Jayawijaya Wamena Catholic Parish were the first to arrive from across the border. Laguwan said the trip cost them about US$500 to come across the land border to see the pope.

“The Vatican is far, so we are humbled that the pope came to Papua New Guinea,” he said.

“We may not be of the same country, but we live on the same land, so we are honoured that the pope is gracing our land and will bring blessings,” he said, adding that it was the first time that many had crossed the border into Papua New Guinea.

Earlier on Sunday, the pope used his mass in Port Moresby to tell the crowd that he wished to prioritise the church on the “peripheries”, adding that they may well feel themselves distant from both their faith and the institutional church, but that God was near to them.

“Brothers and sisters, you who live on this large island in the Pacific Ocean may sometimes have thought of yourselves as a far away and distant land, situated at the edge of the world,” he said.

“Today the Lord wants to draw near to you, to break down distances.”

Some had gathered from the early hours of Sunday to make sure they could take part in morning mass. More than 90% of Papua New Guinea’s 12 million residents call themselves Christian, but the religion sits alongside a large number of local beliefs, customs and rites. About a quarter of Papua New Guineans are Catholic.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.