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Pope Francis

THE Pope wrapped up his first trip to Asia yesterday by challenging Koreans — from the North and South — to reject the “mindset of suspicion and confrontation” that clouds their relations and find ways to forge peace on the war-divided peninsula.
Before boarding a plane back to Rome, the Pope held a mass of reconciliation at Seoul’s main cath­edral, attended by South ­Korean President Park Geun-hye as well as some North Korean defectors. It was the final event of a five-day trip that confirmed the importance of Asia for this papacy and for the Catholic Church as a whole, given it is young and growing in the region while withering in traditionally Christian lands in Europe.

The Pope’s plea for peace came as the US and South Korea started a joint military drill that North Korea warned would result in a “merciless pre-emptive strike” against the allies. In a poignant moment at the start of the mass yesterday, Francis bent down and greeted seven women, many in wheelchairs, who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.

One gave him a pin of a butterfly — a symbol of these “comfort women’s” plight — which he pinned to his vestments and wore throughout the mass.

The Pope said in his homily reconciliation could be brought about only by forgiveness, even if it seemed “impossible, impractical and even at times repugnant”.

“Let us pray, then, for the emergence of new opportunities for dialogue, encounter and the resolution of differences, for continued generosity in providing humanitarian assistance to those in need, and for an ever greater recognition that all Koreans are brothers and sisters, members of one family, one people,” he said.

During his trip, the Pope reached out to China, North Korea and a host of other countries that have no relations with the Holy See.
The Pope will visit the Philippines in January, along with Sri Lanka. In Seoul yesterday, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila, said Francis was offering “a friendly hand to the other countries, and assuring the countries we are not here for any worldly ambition, we are not here as conquerors, we are here as brothers and sisters”.

The Pope laid out these themes from the start of his visit, which was clouded by the firing of five rockets from Pyongyang into the sea. North Korea later said the test firings had nothing to do with Francis’s arrival but rather commemorated the 69th anniversary of Korea’s independence from Japanese occupation.

The US-South Korean military exercises, which started yesterday and involved tens of thousands of troops, are described by the allies as routine and defensive, but Pyongyang sees them as invasion preparation. A spokesman for the North Korean army’s general staff said in a statement carried by state media that a “most powerful and advanced merciless pre-emptive strike will start any time chosen by us”.  — AFP.