Pope Francis' Visit to Indonesia
The Apostolic Journey to Indonesia from the perspective of a man on the street.
Author’s Note: I uploaded many pictures and linked many videos for this post. So for best experience, read this directly on the website.
Greetings Readers,
If you are a Catholic, you might have heard that Pope Francis had just visited Indonesia on an Apostolic Journey1. Just last week, he spent four days in Jakarta, AKA my stomping grounds. If you are a Catholic in Indonesia, then you’ve definitely heard that Pope Francis had just visited Indonesia. If you haven’t, then you should probably go to confession2 since in every Sunday Mass I attended in the last few months, we prayed for the Holy Father’s visit to the nation. Even last Sunday after His Holiness departed, our priest mentioned the Pope’s visit to Jakarta in his homily; I doubt things were all that different in other parishes and dioceses in Indonesia.
The Apostolic Journey was a huge event for Indonesia, to say the least. There was a party-esque atmosphere around the Pope’s visit. Understandably so, since it was the first time since 1989 that the Pope visited Indonesia3. That was before I was born.
The purpose of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Journey was to foster peace and harmony between the different faiths and ethnicities that made up Indonesia4. Now I’m not going to do any analysis on what the Pope said/did or soyjak5 over a supposed ISIS assassination attempt that was thwarted. You can go to some big name YouTube channels for that.
Instead, this post is written to give the perspective of the man on the street.
As I said before, the people of Indonesia had been anticipating the Pope’s visit for some time before he actually arrived in Jakarta. And notice that I said, “the people” rather than “Catholics” because there are many non-Catholics who were also anticipating this. In fact, my Protestant father was looking forward to the Pope’s visit more than either me or my brother, the resident Catholics of the family.
The Pope’s huge popularity in Indonesia was something that I noticed in the four days that His Holiness was here. I honestly didn’t expect that. But for the next few days, I would spend some time in front of the TV with my dad, my mom, and my brother - but mostly my dad - as we kept track of the Pope’s movements throughout Jakarta.
Day 1 (Tuesday)
Let’s start with his arrival in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Just for fun, I recorded it on my phone, then put it on YouTube. In addition, I put in the Asperges for the audio6.
Remember when I said that the Pope is popular in Indonesia? This video is proof of that. As it turned out, I got over 29 thousand views on that and over one thousand likes. I honestly didn’t expect the video to go viral like that. As someone who was used to double digit likes at best on Substack... I found it surreal. It was crazy, simply crazy.
Throughout His Holiness’ visit in Indonesia, I recorded what I saw on TV with my phone and uploaded them to YouTube, and the results...
Heck, my YouTube channel jumped in subscribers from (literally) 10 to over 300.
Maybe I’m in the wrong business, lol. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The next day... (Wednesday)
The Pope met with Joko Widodo, Jokowi for short, the President of Indonesia. The Indonesian government threw a parade in honor of His Holiness. I must say that the Indonesian military put a great show, but maybe I’m just biased. I also recorded the Pope meeting Prabowo Subianto, the nation’s president-elect as of the writing of this post.
This video also got a lot of likes, though not as much as the previous one. I probably struck gold in a way that wouldn’t happen again.
His Holiness also gave a speech in Indonesia’s State Palace; said speech was in Italian, so I didn’t understand what he was saying. But thanks to the power of translation, we were able to understand a thing or two.
He also praised Indonesian families for still having three or four kids while mentioning that in other countries7, people prefer to adopt pets. So we know that His Holiness has jokes.
Later that day, His Holiness made his way to the Jakarta Cathedral, known formally as The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. Here, he met with the priests, the monks, the nuns, and all the other Indonesian Catholics who were present; they expressed their gratitude to the Pope for his visit. But even without that, you can tell that they were grateful:
Yes, another video. I honestly don’t know who was the guy that Pope Francis interacted with, and what His Holiness gave to him. But he looked happy. Also, he was not the only one who was happy with this encounter as this video got about 900 likes as of the writing of this article.
So that’s Day 2 of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Journey to Indonesia.
The next day... (Thursday)
This is a special day because His Holiness was to celebrate Mass at the Gelora Bung Karno, Indonesia’s National Stadium. I actually live close to where the stadium is. I would have loved to attend, but I didn’t get a ticket.
But you know who did? My brother.
I’ll be honest, I was kind of jealous. But I was also happy for him. I’ll get to this later because the Mass itself was held in late evening approaching night. Makes sense - with Jakarta’s hot tropical climate, it’s definitely not a good idea for someone as old as His Holiness to be outdoors with the afternoon heat for hours on end.
Instead...
Early in the day, the Pope was to visit Istiqlal Mosque to have a talk with the religious leaders of Indonesia. At the risk of being seen as a shameless self-promoter, here’s my article on my own visit to that mosque:
My parents and I had some personal stuff to take care of, so we couldn’t watch whatever happened there. Instead, we had to drive to my parents’ rental property in Pasar Minggu; I live in Kebayoran Baru, so it was a bit of a drive. Usually, traffic would have been a total drag. Instead it was light, especially in the heart of the city thanks to the Papal visit.
I don’t have a picture to illustrate the aforementioned lack of traffic; instead, enjoy my dad’s swimming pool.
Once our business was done in Pasar Minggu. We went back home. My day was not done yet. Since my brother got the ticket, he was able to go to the stadium to attend the Pope’s Mass. Thankfully for us all, he took photos.
As for me, I had to make to with going to the local parish for the Livestream Mass. I had to come in early so I could get a good seat. Seriously, the church was packed.
I can’t say I had the best of views, but it was good enough for me to take yet another video.
That chant was so catchy I found myself singing it for the next few days. Though YouTube doesn’t seem to share my love for it as this video has the least amount of likes of all the “Pope Francis in Indonesia” shorts that I uploaded to YouTube.
And finally, we got to experience His Holiness leading a Holy Mass in Indonesia. It might be in livestream, but we might as well be there ourselves. Ah, the powers of technology.
My only issue? Since the Pope’s homily was in Italian, I couldn’t understand a thing. But that wasn’t a big deal. Not at all.
Of course, the one good thing about experiencing the Holy Mass in the local parish instead of the stadium was that I could go home when it was done. My brother had to wait for about an hour before he could go home; apparently, it was a security arrangement of sorts: His Holiness had to leave the stadium first before everyone else could leave.
In any case, we enjoyed the day. And this is something that I’m sure I’ll remember for a long time to come since Papal visits don’t come around very often in Indonesia. The last time it happened was 35 years ago, so I won’t be surprised if we have to wait another 35 years before the Pope will visit this country again.
The next day... (Friday)
Finally came the time for the Pope to leave Indonesia. He flew out of Jakarta to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea.
And even in his last day in Indonesia, there were still people trying to get a hold of him. Trying to get blessings, trying to touch him, even just seeing him; I’m sure His Holiness had to deal with this in all the four days he was here.
I wonder if something like this was what Christ Himself had gone through during His ministry on Earth about two thousand years ago. All those people trying to get a hold of Our Lord for various reasons… I definitely saw the resemblance between that and how the people of Indonesia reacted to the Pope. Now for those who think I’m being irreverent, if not blaspheming, for comparing the Holy Father to Christ… Pace! Obviously, they’re not the same. But there’s also a reason why we refer to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ. And besides, it was my protestant mom who put that idea in my head when she quoted Mark 10:148 in response to all the parents who brought their little kids to the Pope.
Ironic, but not all that odd. It was my Protestant dad that got me, a Catholic, to actually pay close attention to the Pope’s visit. Meanwhile, it was my Protestant mom who brought up an aspect to the Pope that I hadn’t thought about. Funny how that works.
And with the Pope ready to fly out of Jakarta, I decided to upload one more short video to YouTube. In this one, I wanted to show my appreciation for His Holiness for visiting my country:
I’m sure I’ve missed a few things regarding the Pope’s visit to Indonesia in this post. But as I said before, this post is a “man on the street” perspective of his visit rather than an in-depth analysis or newscasting.
So what did I think?
I will be honest, I didn’t expect the Pope to get such a warm welcome. After all, Indonesia’s a Muslim country. It is not known for their warm treatments of Christians. But perhaps things may change in the future. Who is to say? But if so, then His Holiness will have something to do with that. I truly believe that.
Until next time, Michael P. Marpaung
As of the writing of this post, he should either be in Timor-Leste or Singapore.
For not keeping the Sabbath holy.
Pope St. John Paul II was the one who visited the country back then.
And there are a lot, so I’m with the Pope on this.
For those not familiar with Internet memes, this is what I mean:
Believe it or not, the choice of using the Asperges was not just a random thing.
I’m guessing he’s referring to the West, where there are people who think of themselves as “dog moms” or whatever.
To be more specific: “Let the little children come to me; do not hinder them. For it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”