Medan, Indonesia – At the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in the Indonesian city of Medan, the atmosphere at Sunday Mass was unusually excited.
Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church, is preparing to embark on a two-week tour of Asia Pacific, starting in Indonesia on Tuesday and visiting Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.
Father Joseph Gultom told Al Jazeera that Indonesian Catholics were “very excited” about Francis’ visit, the first by a pope in more than 30 years.
“Of course I am very happy,” he said. “The Pope is our leader and it is an opportunity for people to improve their faith in the Catholic Church and an important symbol of the Catholic faith in Indonesia, where the majority is Muslim. It is an important moment for us.”
Indonesia has a population of over 270 million people and has six officially recognized religions: 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 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 Friendship Tunnel, 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 meeting, as well as celebrate a mass for some 80,000 worshippers at Jakarta's Gelora Bung Karno Stadium complex, a venue usually reserved for sporting and political events.
Unity in diversity
Erwin, a regular worshipper who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name, told Al Jazeera that the history of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in Medan mirrors the trajectory of the broader development of Catholicism in Indonesia, which was first introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century.
“The cathedral was built in 1905 by Jesuit priests. At first, the faithful were Dutch and Tamil immigrants who worked mainly on plantations,” he explained.
He added that the first Indonesian bishop took over the leadership of the cathedral in 1963, after Indonesia's independence from the Dutch in 1945. From the 1970s, Indonesian faithful began to flock to the church in greater numbers.
“It is important that the Pope visits Indonesia, as most Indonesian Catholics have only seen him on television. It is good that he visits Indonesia to show the world our unity in diversity. There are not many Catholics in Indonesia, so it shows that we are recognized and taken into account.”
“This shows that we have a role to play in Indonesia.”
Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province and Indonesia's fifth-largest city, has a large and thriving Christian community. About 20 percent of its nearly 2.5 million residents are Protestant and about 5 percent are Catholic.
East Nusa Tenggara and South Papua are the only regions in Indonesia where Catholicism is the majority faith according to the Indonesian Statistics Bureau.
Alexander Arifianto, senior researcher and coordinator of the Indonesia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University, told Al Jazeera that Indonesia has “a small but quite significant Catholic minority”.
“Historically, Catholics have been key members of the political elite, such as cabinet ministers and military generals, particularly under former President Suharto,” he said.
“It is a good opportunity for the administration to showcase Indonesia as a pluralistic and modern Muslim nation given the government’s enthusiasm to welcome Pope Francis.
“It is also a good opportunity for Muslim organisations such as Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Islamic organisation, which has long displayed religious tolerance and pluralism as part of its platform, to show how Indonesian Islam is tolerant towards non-Islamic religions.”
'Special Occasion'
Some 2,000 faithful from across North Sumatra will travel to Jakarta to attend Mass with the Pope. Between 10 and 20 people from each parish have been selected for the trip, including Nicholas Dharma, the cathedral's head of security.
As part of his role, Dharma is on constant alert, escorting clergy around the cathedral complex and monitoring everyone who sets foot on church grounds.
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Mary has only one heavily guarded entrance and exit and is surrounded by high metal fences.
The reason for the tight security measures dates back to Christmas Eve 2000, when members of the hardline Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group delivered a parcel bomb to the church as part of a coordinated attack on churches in Jakarta and eight other Indonesian cities. In total, 18 people were killed and more than 100 injured.
More than two decades later, memories of the attacks still linger, Dharma said.
“I just hope everything is safe for the Pope's visit,” he said, adding that over the past 15 years the church had worked with Indonesia's National Anti-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) to improve security operations and keep parishioners safe.
“The Pope is our ultimate leader and not all Popes have visited Indonesia, so this is a very important moment for us,” he told Al Jazeera.
Although they were not yet born when the previous two popes visited Indonesia, Ririn Silalhi and Yola Marpaung, both 20-year-old sociology students, said they normally attended worship at a different Catholic church in Medan but had come to the cathedral because it was a “special occasion” ahead of Pope Francis' visit.
“We hope that his visit will strengthen relations between Indonesia and the Vatican,” Silalhi said.
“We are very pleased that the Pope is focusing on Indonesia. It shows that he is kind and humble, and shows that Indonesia is not only Muslim.”
“It feels good to receive this special attention.”
