Pope Francis calls for end to tribal conflict in Papua New Guinea

Pope Francis travelled 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.

Brings aid, toys to island nation

• Pope Francis brought a cargo of about a ton of medicine, clothing, musical instruments and toys. Prado said Francis was also helping to build a new secondary school. He said half of the children of the diocese are unable to go to high school because there simply aren’t enough spots for them
• His visit to Vanimo was the highlight of his visit to Papua New Guinea, the second leg of his four-nation tour of Southeast Asia and Oceania. After first stopping in Indonesia, Francis heads on Monday to East Timor and wraps up his visit in Singapore later in the week

For an Argentine pope who marvelled 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. Francis has previously travelled to the edge of the Arctic (to apologise 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 raised stage, Francis praised the 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 behaviours 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 characterised the country’s culture but have grown more lethal in recent years. Francis arrived in Papua New Guinea to urge an end to the violence, including gender-based violence, and for a sense of civic responsibility to prevail.

Francis had started the day with a mass before an estimated 35,000 people at the stadium in the capital, Port Moresby. 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.