Pope Francis arrives in Singapore, last stop on 12-day Asia tour
Pope Francis arrived in Singapore on Wednesday from East Timor, on the final leg of an ambitious 12-day journey across Southeast Asia and Oceania.
SINGAPORE — Pope Francis arrived in Singapore on Wednesday from East Timor, on the final leg of an ambitious 12-day journey across Southeast Asia and Oceania.
The Aero Dili flight carrying the pope and his entourage arrived in the city-state for a two-night visit that will include a speech to political authorities and a Mass at the National Stadium, which the Vatican expects to draw some 55,000 people.
The pope will also hold private meetings with President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, and former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Francis is only the second pope to visit Singapore, following a brief five-hour layover by the late John Paul II in 1986. The country counts about 210,000 Catholics among its 5.92 million people, according to the Vatican.
The pope arrived from Dili, East Timor’s capital, where on Tuesday he celebrated Mass with an estimated 600,000 of the country’s 1.3 million population, in one of the largest ever turnouts as a proportion of a country’s population for a Mass during a papal visit.
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