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

Pope Francis will arrive in mostly Muslim Indonesia on Tuesday on the first part of a tour that will also take him to Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.

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