Pope urges harmony amid tribal violence

Visit to Pacific island nation is the farthest trip of his pontificate

- NICOLE WINFIELD

VANIMO, 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 the capital, Port Moresby, to Vanimo, on the northwest coast of the South Pacific nation. There, he met with the local Catholic community and the missionaries from his native Argentina who have been ministering to them.

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.

Pope Francis, elected largely on the strength of a speech he gave in 2013 about the need for the church to go out to the “peripheries,” met followers Sunday in the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea.