Medan, Indonesia – On the Immaculate Conception of Mary Cathedral within the Indonesian metropolis of Medan, the temper at Sunday mass was unusually excited.
Pope Francis, the pinnacle of the Catholic Church, is ready to start a two-week tour of Asia Pacific, which can begin in Indonesia on Tuesday and soak up Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.
Father Joseph Gultom advised Al Jazeera that Indonesian Catholics had been “very enthusiastic” about Francis’s go to, the primary by a pope in additional than 30 years.
“In fact, I’m so completely happy,” he mentioned. “The pope is our chief and it’s an event for folks to enhance their perception within the Catholic Church and an necessary image of the Catholic religion in Indonesia, which is majority Muslim. It’s a important second for us.”
Indonesia has a inhabitants of greater than 270 million folks and has six formally recognised religions together with Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Confucianism.
About 87 p.c of the inhabitants is Muslim, and solely about 3 p.c is Catholic.
Francis can be solely the third pope to go to Indonesia, after Pope Paul VI in 1970 and Pope John Paul II in 1989.
After arriving in Jakarta on Tuesday, Pope Francis will tour the capital’s Istiqlal Mosque in addition to the Tunnel of Friendship – an underground tunnel in-built 2020 that runs between the mosque and the town’s Catholic cathedral as a logo of interfaith cooperation.
He may also meet the nation’s grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, and attend an interfaith gathering, in addition to maintain a mass for an estimated 80,000 worshippers at Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Stadium advanced; a venue often reserved for sporting and political occasions.
Unity in variety
Common worshipper Erwin, who like many Indonesians goes by one title, advised Al Jazeera that the historical past of the Immaculate Conception of Mary Cathedral in Medan mirrored the trajectory of the broader growth of Catholicism in Indonesia, which was first launched by the Portuguese within the sixteenth century.
“The cathedral was in-built 1905 by Jesuit monks. To start with, worshippers had been Dutch and Tamil migrants who primarily labored on plantations,” he mentioned.
He added that the primary Indonesian bishop took over on the cathedral in 1963, following Indonesian independence from the Dutch in 1945. From the Seventies onwards, Indonesian worshippers started to come back to the church in bigger numbers.
“It will be important for the Pope to go to as most Indonesian Catholics have solely ever seen him on TV. It’s good for him to go to Indonesia to indicate our unity in variety to the world. There are usually not many Catholics in Indonesia, so it reveals that we’re being acknowledged and we’re being counted.”
“It reveals now we have a task to play in Indonesia.”
Medan, the capital of North Sumatra Province and the fifth largest metropolis in Indonesia, has a big and thriving Christian group. About 20 p.c of its almost 2.5 million persons are Protestant and about 5 p.c Catholic.
East Nusa Tenggara and South Papua are the one areas in Indonesia the place Catholicism is almost all religion in keeping with Indonesia’s bureau of statistics.
Alexander Arifianto, a senior fellow and coordinator of the Indonesia Ppogramme on the S Rajaratnam College of Worldwide Research (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological College, advised Al Jazeera that Indonesia has “a small but fairly important Catholic minority”.
“Traditionally, Catholics have comprised key members of the political elite like cupboard ministers and army generals, significantly underneath former President Soeharto,” he mentioned.
“It’s a good alternative for the administration to showcase Indonesia as a pluralistic and fashionable Muslim nation due to the keenness of the federal government to obtain Pope Francis.
“It is usually a very good alternative for Muslim organisations like Nahdlatul Ulama, the biggest Islamic organisation on this planet, which has lengthy proven spiritual tolerance and pluralism as a part of its platform, to showcase how Indonesian Islam is tolerant in the direction of non-Islamic faiths.”
‘Big day’
Some 2,000 worshippers from throughout North Sumatra will journey to Jakarta to attend mass with the Pope. Between 10 and 20 folks from every parish have been chosen for journey, together with Nicholas Dharma, the pinnacle of safety on the cathedral.
As a part of his position, Dharma is on fixed alert, escorting the clergy across the cathedral advanced in addition to monitoring everybody who units foot on the church grounds.
The Immaculate Conception of Mary Cathedral has just one closely guarded entrance and exit and is surrounded by excessive steel fences.
The rationale for the heavy safety stems again to Christmas Eve 2000, when a parcel bomb was delivered to the church by members of the hardline group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), as a part of a coordinated assault on church buildings in Jakarta and eight different cities throughout Indonesia. In complete, 18 folks had been killed and greater than 100 others injured.
Greater than 20 years later, the reminiscences of the assaults nonetheless linger, Dharma mentioned.
“I simply hope all the things can be protected for the pope’s go to,” he mentioned, including that, for the previous 15 years, the church had labored with Indonesia’s Nationwide Counter-Terrorism Company (BNPT) to enhance safety operations and preserve parishioners protected.
“The pope is our highest chief and never all popes have visited Indonesia, so it is a essential second for us,” he advised Al Jazeera.
Whereas they weren’t but born when the 2 earlier popes visited Indonesia, Ririn Silalhi and Yola Marpaung, each 20-year-old sociology college students, mentioned that they often worshipped at a distinct Catholic church in Medan, however had come to the cathedral because it was a “big day” forward of Pope Francis’s go to.
“We hope his go to will strengthen relations between Indonesia and the Vatican,” Silalhi mentioned.
“We’re so completely happy that the pope is specializing in Indonesia. It reveals he’s sort and humble, and it reveals that there are usually not simply Muslims in Indonesia.”
“It feels good to get this particular consideration.”
