‘I’m so happy’: Indonesia prepares for first papal visit since 1989

Medan, Indonesia – At the Immaculate Conception of Mary Cathedral in the Indonesian city of Medan, the mood at Sunday mass was unusually excited.

Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, is set to begin a two-week tour of Asia Pacific, which will start in Indonesia on Tuesday and take in Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.

Father Joseph Gultom told Al Jazeera that Indonesian Catholics were “very enthusiastic” about Francis’s visit, the first by a pope in more than 30 years.

“Of course, I am so happy,” he said. “The pope is our leader and it is an occasion for people to improve their belief in the Catholic Church and an important symbol of the Catholic faith in Indonesia, which is majority Muslim. It is a significant moment for us.”

Indonesia has a population of more than 270 million people and has six officially recognised religions including Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Confucianism.

About 87 percent of the population is Muslim, and only about 3 percent is Catholic.

Francis will be only the third pope to visit Indonesia, after Pope Paul VI in 1970 and Pope John Paul II in 1989.

After arriving in Jakarta on Tuesday, Pope Francis will tour the capital’s Istiqlal Mosque as well as the Tunnel of Friendship – an underground tunnel built in 2020 that runs between the mosque and the city’s Catholic cathedral as a symbol of interfaith cooperation.

He will also meet the country’s grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, and attend an interfaith gathering, as well as hold a mass for an estimated 80,000 worshippers at Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Stadium complex; a venue usually reserved for sporting and political events.

Unity in diversity

Regular worshipper Erwin, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told Al Jazeera that the history of the Immaculate Conception of Mary Cathedral in Medan reflected the trajectory of the wider development of Catholicism in Indonesia, which was first introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century.

“The cathedral was built in 1905 by Jesuit priests. In the beginning, worshippers were Dutch and Tamil migrants who primarily worked on plantations,” he said.

He added that the first Indonesian bishop took over at the cathedral in 1963, following Indonesian independence from the Dutch in 1945. From the 1970s onwards, Indonesian worshippers began to come to the church in larger numbers.

“It is important for the Pope to visit as most Indonesian Catholics have only ever seen him on TV. It is good for him to visit Indonesia to show our unity in diversity to the world. There are not many Catholics in Indonesia, so it shows that we are being acknowledged and we are being counted.”

“It shows we have a role to play in Indonesia.”

Medan, the capital of North Sumatra Province and the fifth largest city in Indonesia, has a large and thriving Christian community. About 20 percent of its nearly 2.5 million people are Protestant and about 5 percent Catholic.

East Nusa Tenggara and South Papua are the only regions in Indonesia where Catholicism is the majority faith according to Indonesia’s bureau of statistics.

Alexander Arifianto, a senior fellow and coordinator of the Indonesia Ppogramme at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University, told Al Jazeera that Indonesia has “a small yet quite significant Catholic minority”.

“Historically, Catholics have comprised key members of the political elite like cabinet ministers and military generals, particularly under former President Soeharto,” he said.

“It is a good opportunity for the administration to showcase Indonesia as a pluralistic and modern Muslim nation because of the enthusiasm of the government to receive Pope Francis.

“It is also a good opportunity for Muslim organisations like Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organisation in the world, which has long shown religious tolerance and pluralism as part of its platform, to showcase how Indonesian Islam is tolerant towards non-Islamic faiths.”

‘Special occasion’

Some 2,000 worshippers from across North Sumatra will travel to Jakarta to attend mass with the Pope. Between 10 and 20 people from each parish have been selected for travel, including Nicholas Dharma, the head of security at the cathedral.

As part of his role, Dharma is on constant alert, escorting the clergy around the cathedral complex as well as monitoring everyone who sets foot on the church grounds.

The Immaculate Conception of Mary Cathedral has only one heavily guarded entrance and exit and is surrounded by high metal fences.

The reason for the heavy security stems back to Christmas Eve 2000, when a parcel bomb was delivered to the church by members of the hardline group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), as part of a coordinated attack on churches in Jakarta and eight other cities across Indonesia. In total, 18 people were killed and more than 100 others injured.

More than two decades later, the memories of the attacks still linger, Dharma said.

“I just hope everything will be safe for the pope’s visit,” he said, adding that, for the past 15 years, the church had worked with Indonesia’s National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) to improve security operations and keep parishioners safe.

“The pope is our highest leader and not all popes have visited Indonesia, so this is a very important moment for us,” he told Al Jazeera.

While they were not yet born when the two previous popes visited Indonesia, Ririn Silalhi and Yola Marpaung, both 20-year-old sociology students, said that they usually worshipped at a different Catholic church in Medan, but had come to the cathedral as it was a “special occasion” ahead of Pope Francis’s visit.

“We hope his visit will strengthen relations between Indonesia and the Vatican,” Silalhi said.

“We are so happy that the pope is focusing on Indonesia. It shows he is kind and humble, and it shows that there are not just Muslims in Indonesia.”

“It feels good to get this special attention.”