AFP
Pope Francis traveled to the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea on Sunday to celebrate the Catholic Church of the peripheries. While 90 percent of Papua New Guinea’s 12 million residents call themselves Christian, religion sits longside a panoply of local beliefs, customs and rites – some of which spark bloody zeal.
Pope Francis visited a remote jungle-flanked community in Papua New Guinea Sunday, where he urged an end to violence, and “superstition and magic” that tarnishes a place he likened to Eden.
The 87-year-old pontiff touched down in Vanimo, a coastal town a few degrees south of the equator, as he marked the halfway point of a gruelling 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific.
Donning a traditional Bird of Paradise feathered headdress despite the stiffing tropical heat, the pope drove home his pledge to embrace people and places on “the periphery”.
He described Vanimo as a “grandiose spectacle of nature bursting forth with life, all evoking the image of Eden”.
He was greeted as a guest of honour by bare-chested Walsa tribesmen with body paint, ornate headdresses and bands made of feathers, shells and grass, who performed a ceremonial dance.
The pope thanked the assembled thousands, some of whom had walked or sailed for days to come and see him, and praised the “contagious smiles and your exuberant joy” of local children.
But he also painted this as a troubled paradise.
These and other evils, he said, “imprison and take away the happiness of so many of our brothers and sisters, even in this country”.