Pope embarks on longest, farthest and most challenging trip to Asia

Pope Francis is embarking on a four-nation trip to Asia and Oceania that is the longest, farthest and most challenging of his pontificate.

VATICAN CITY — If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest, farthest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.

Francis will clock 20,390 miles by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, in terms of both days on the road and distances traveled.

That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip at the last minute (to Dubai in November to participate in the U.N. climate conference) on doctors’ orders.

But Francis is pushing ahead with this trip, originally planned for 2020 but postponed because of Covid-19. He’s bringing along his medical team of a doctor and two nurses and taking the usual health precautions on the ground. But in a novelty, he’s adding his personal secretaries into the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.

The long trip recalls the globetrotting travels of St. John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, though East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his landmark 1989 trip.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-embarks-longest-farthest-challenging-trip-asia-rcna169193

---