Sufficient lamp

Despite differences, Filipinos see Pope Francis visit to next door South Korea, now winding down, as a dress rehearsal for the pontiff’s trip to the Philippines

Korean Catholicism has a history of surviving persecution set in an Asia that has the greatest potential for growth of Catholicism, notes New York Times.  Francis was to beatify Saturday Paul Yun Ji-Chung, an 18th-century layman (Saints   Lorenzo Ruiz of Tondo and Pedro Calungsod of Visayas were laymen.)  Some 16,000 Catholics were martyred under the 18^th century Joseon Dynasty

Francis plane landed in a Seoul awash with books on the pope, in Korean. Banners fluttered while coins and postage stamps to celebrate the visit were issued. President Park Geun-hye was baptized as “Juliana” at a Catholic church. Her government officially says she has no religion.

Catholics in South Korea grew from 1.86 million in 1985 to 5.14 million, nearly 11 percent of the total population, After years of exponential growth, the  number of Protestants, growth, peaked at 8.76 million in 1995, then slipped  to 8.61 million .

Korean Catholics have a clout that is larger than the numbers suggest. That partly stems a leadership role in human rights struggle, under authoritarian regimes (1960s-1980s). These span off into today’s social issues churned by rapid economic surge.

From Seoul, the pontiff motored to Daejeon, the country’s fifth largest metropolis 167 km south of Seoul, to attend the sixth Asian Youth Day. He met thousands of young Catholics from 30 Asian nations where 60 percent of the world’s young people live.

AYD traces its roots back to the 1991 World Youth Day in Czestochowa, Poland. The previous five AYDs were held at Hua Hin, Thailand in 1999; Taipei, Taiwan in 2001; Bangalore, India in 2003; Hong Kong, in 2006; and Philippines in 2009. 

Francis’ visit faced multiple challenges. He spoke to another party that wasn’t physically present but listened: China, writes Boston Globe. There are backdoor contacts with President Xi Jinping. The Vatican frets over the lot of China’s 13 million Catholics, many of whom are compelled to practice their faith underground.

Korea is splintered, by the Demilitarized Zone, into an open South and sealed North.  Francis offered prayers for Korean reconciliation in Seoul Thursday, AFP reported. That went unheard in the north which treats   unsanctioned acts of devotion as “criminal”, as a recent UN Commission of Inquiry found.

“Appearance of religious tolerance is maintained for the international audience while in fact religious activities are suppressed internally," it said.

Pyongyang's state-run Korean Catholic Association refused an invitation to send Catholic believers to Francis mass in Seoul's Myeongdong cathedral. Catholics in the south refer to them as the "Church of silence: no confessions, baptisms—no sacraments... There is no known underground church.”

Yet, in the early 20^th century, Pyongyang was a regional missionary hub with scores of churches and a thriving Christian community that earned it the title of “Jerusalem of the East”.

“Today’s North Koreans are largely unaware of this, but most founders of North Korea's communist movement like Kim Il-Sung were the sons and daughters of Protestant or Catholic believers,” said noted North Korean expert Andrei Lankov.

The government is aware of the Polish example and the role the church played in bringing down Communism.” Most experts see little chance of any significant change in religious freedoms, unless the North implodes.”

“Everyone   realizes the importance of Asia,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told Wall Street Journal. “Those who lead evangelization efforts look at Asia, where there is only a small Catholic population, and see great possibilities.”

About 3% of Asians were Catholic, compared with 72% of Latin Americans and a third of Europeans in 2010, Pew Research Center notes. The Philippines has the third-largest Catholic community in the world. When deciding on his first batch of new cardinals in February, the pontiff added a second red hat to Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato.

South Korea and Vietnam have fast-growing Catholic communities, but Catholics make up just 10% and 7% of their populations, The Catholic Church struggled to compete with better-funded Protestant denominations.

Japan has about 440,000 Catholics, many of the, immigrants from such as Brazil and the Philippines. The church focuses on youth outreach.

India counted 13 million in its last census. The church and other Christian denominations run many schools in India and fret a growing Hindu nationalist influence on education under the new government.

In Pakistan, Catholics have been killed for criticizing blasphemy laws. The victims included the minister for minority affairs, a Catholic and the governor of Punjab province, who was defending a Christian mother of five accused of blasphemy.

Catholics make up about 4% of Malaysia’s population. A court upheld a ban against a church-owned newspaper from using the word “Allah” .The church argued that its Malay speaking community has used the word Allah in its worship for centuries. 

“Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness,” Francis says. “(It is), a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey.”