Pope’s Asia trip marks 60 years of papal visits to the region
Bangkok, Sep 2: Pope Francis’ visit to Southeast Asia, the longest trip in his papacy, is the latest in decades of regular papal visits to the Asia-Pacific region.
Papal travel is a thing of the modern era, starting with Pope Paul VI, who became the first pontiff to leave Italy in more than 150 years when he made his famous pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1964, shortly after becoming pope.
His next visit was to India later that same year, marking the first time a pope had ever visited Asia. It was one of many firsts for Paul VI, who was also the first pope to fly in an airplane, the first to leave Europe and the first to visit countries on six continents, earning him the nickname “the Pilgrim Pope.” Others by Paul VI, according to the Vatican, included a 1970 trip with stops in Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ceylon – today Sri Lanka – and the Philippines, where a would-be assassin unsuccessfully attempted to stab him at Manila airport.
His successor, Pope John Paul I, never got the chance to travel, dying just over a month after he ascended to the papacy. But Pope John Paul II, who followed in 1978, picked up where Paul VI left off and by the time of his death in 2005, was the most traveled pope in history; a title he holds to this day. He made his first of two visits to the Philippines, one of Asia’s most Catholic countries, in 1981 in a trip that also took him to Pakistan, Guam, Japan and Anchorage, Alaska, according to the Vatican. Over the years he would visit Asia many times, including trips to South Korea, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. John Paul II also visited Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific island nations of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. (AP)
State burial for over 700 victims of Nazi’s massacres
Warsaw, Sep 2: Poland on Monday held a state burial of the remains of over 700 victims of Nazi Germany’s World War II mass executions that were recently uncovered in the so-called Valley of Death in the country’s north.
The observances in the town of Chojnice began with a funeral Mass at the basilica, leading to an interment with military honours at a local cemetery of the victims of the Nazi crimes. President Andrzej Duda, local authorities and top officials of the state National Remembrance Institute, which carried out and documented the exhumations, took part in the events.
The remains of Polish civilians, including some 218 asylum patients, were exhumed in 2021-2024 from a number of separate mass graves at the outskirts of Chojnice. Personal belongings and documents helped identify some 120 of the victims of an execution in early 1945. Among them were teachers, priests, policemen, foresters, postal workers and landowners.
Historians have established that the Nazis, shortly after invading Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, executed some of the civilians. The remains of another 500 victims are from the January 1945 execution, when the Germans were fleeing the area.
Poland lost 6 million citizens, or a sixth of its population, of which 3 million were Jewish, in the war. The country also suffered huge losses to its infrastructure, industry and agriculture. (AP)
No honeymoon for new UK PM after unrest
London, Sep 2: There was no summer honeymoon for Keir Starmer.
Britain’s new prime minister, elected in a landslide less than two months ago, had to cancel a planned vacation after anti-immigrant unrest erupted across the country. He has spent his first weeks in office dealing with the aftermath, and issuing stark warnings about the state of the nation and the economy.
As lawmakers returned to Parliament on Monday after a shortened summer break, Starmer’s left-of-centre Labour Party government was preparing for a budget statement next month that’s likely to include tax rises or public spending cuts – or both.
The mood music is in stark contrast to the campaign song used by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the last Labour leader to win an election: “Things Can Only Get Better.”
“Frankly, things will get worse before they get better,” Starmer told voters in a televised speech last week. (AP)