Papua New Guinea: When Francis got himself to Vanimo
Giorgio Licini, a PIME missionary, accompanied the pontiff on last year's trip to a distant frontier mission. “Francis’s lesson was to look inside ourselves before pointing the finger at atheists, the media or technological civilisation,” because “A pilgrim does not have a programme, but a goal.”
Port Moresby (AsiaNews) – When Pope Francis travelled to Papua New Guinea he knew that we were rather opposed to a visit to Vanimo, a place that is too remote with logistical challenges that were too demanding for us and the government.
When the trip was initially planned for 2020, he was expected to visit Rabaul as a second stop after the capital Port Moresby. But COVID-19 pandemic caused it to be postponed. In 2024, however, he told his aides not to listen to anyone and get him to Vanimo.
He had his own motives as a bishop and pastor. Indeed, he wanted to rediscover in the land of mission a friendship and spiritual harmony he never achieved in his homeland with a group of compatriots, priests and religious, generally defined as "conservatives" that he, when he was in Buenos Aires, saw as distant and even difficult but who were great on the ground in Oceania. This seems to embody Francis’s journey as a person and as a man of the cloth.
When he was a young man in his native Argentina ruled by generals and in the Society of Jesus, the late pontiff saw directly the effects of ideological radicalisation in society, including in parishes and convents, the right-left cleavage, progressive vs conservative simplification.
Now, after more than half a century of opposition and struggle, anger and loss, what really matters for the Church? To continue to emphasise what has already been said and established, dogmas and principles, one's personal inclination towards the right or the left? Or rather, to walk, with the same truths and unchanged principles, with believers and non-believers, with confused minds and hardened hearts, towards personal and communal conversion?
On the last day of his ministry, God brought Francis together with an American political leader whose many positions he certainly disliked, and the Easter crowd of believers who were both joyful and yet to some extent desperate.
Some 60 years ago, when Pope John XXII passed away, the Second Vatican Council that had not yet ended. Pope Francis was able to bring to a close his Synod on Synodality (Communion, Participation and Mission) for a more open, sincere and generous Church.
He leaves his successor with the task of implementing it. This should have happened after Pope John XXIII, but historical factors, strong personalities, mental rigidities, hardened hearts, defections, presumptuousness, prevented it, turning hope of a springtime for the Church into a freezing winter, at least in the West.
In this regard, a lot has been said about secularisation, individualism and other real or presumed evils. But Francis’s lesson was to look inside ourselves before pointing the finger at atheists, the media or technological civilisation.
Perhaps he had to do it first, or be among the first to do it, at a certain point in his life, even against himself. Then he taught it to anyone who would listen. A pilgrim does not have a programme, but a goal. This is what Francis showed in Vanimo (and elsewhere), with words and deeds.
* PIME missionary in Port Moresby, advocacy manager at Caritas Papua New Guinea.
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