SEOUL:Pope Francis arrived on Thursday in South Korea on the first papal visit to the Asian nation in a quarter century, stepping off a plane onto a red carpet and greeting the president, local Catholics and grieving relatives. During his five-day visit, Francis plans to beatify 124 Korean martyrs and encourage a vibrant and growing local church seen as a model for the future of Catholicism.
Pope Francis arrived in the South Korean capital Seoul after sending an unprecedented message of good will to China as he flew over the country that does not allow its Catholics to recognise his authority.
However, about half of more than 100 Chinese who had planned to attend an Asian Youth Day event to be presided over during the pope’s visit are unable to attend due to “a complicated situation inside China”, Heo Young-yeop, spokesman for the Committee for the Papal Visit to Korea, told reporters.
He declined to give further details, citing their safety. Another organiser, who declined to be identified, said some of the would-be attendees had been arrested by Chinese authorities.
Shortly before the pope arrived in Seoul, North Korea fired three short-range rockets into the sea off its east coast, according to South Korea’s defence ministry. The launches came ahead of US-South Korean military exercises scheduled to start on Monday.
Francis will spend five days in South Korea, meeting some of the country’s five million Catholics on the first trip by a pontiff to Asia since 1999.
“Upon entering Chinese air space, I extend best wishes to your Excellency and your fellow citizens and I invoke the divine blessing of peace and well-being upon the nation,” he said in a radio message to President Xi Jinping.
It was the first time a pope had been allowed to fly over China on Asian tours. His predecessor John Paul II had to avoid Chinese airspace because of the fraught relations between Beijing and the Vatican.
The Vatican has had no formal relations with China since shortly after the Communist Party took power in 1949. The Catholic Church in China is divided into two communities: an “official” Church known as the “Patriotic Association” answerable to the Party, and an underground Church that swears allegiance only to the pope in Rome.
North Korea had turned down an invitation from the South Korean Catholic church for members of its state-run Korean Catholic Association to attend a papal mass on Monday in Seoul, citing the start of the joint US-South Korean military drills.
Francis did not mention China or the divided Korean peninsula in his brief chat with reporters on the plane but instead insisted on the media’s role in promoting peace in a divided and violent world.
“May your words help unite … I ask you to always give a message of peace,” he said.
After being told about the death of a television cameraman in Gaza, Francis led journalists aboard the plane in a minute of silent prayer in his memory.
The pope was greeted in a subdued event at a Seoul air base by South Korean President Park Geun-hye with a delegation of South Korean Catholics including two North Korean defectors, as well as relatives of victims of the Sewol ferry that capsized in April, killing about 300 people, most of them school children.
“The disaster is heart-breaking, I have not forgotten the victims,” South Korea’s Yonhap news reported Pope Francis as saying to members of the welcome delegation.
“Peace on the Korean peninsula has always had place in my heart,” he said.
The pope was scheduled to attend a formal welcoming ceremony later in the day, in order to allow the 77-year-old pontiff several hours for rest after the long flight.
The visit is Francis’ third international trip since his election in March 2013. Pope Francis has on previous foreign visits opted to ditch his bulletproof ‘Popemobile’ car in favour of more modest modes of transportation.
In Seoul, he was picked up at the end of the red carpet in a dark grey locally-made Kia hatchback. (Reuters)
