When he appointed Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle as head of Catholic aid agency Caritas Internationalis, the cardinal revealed that the pope had told him he wanted an Asian in the position because "the future of the Church is in Asia."

"It is not a matter of honour. Is it a challenge, a prophecy or a great calling? We do not know. But it is surely a matter of great responsibility, a great mission," the cardinal said.

And while the Church only has an estimated 120-140 million followers in North, Southeast and South Asia from about 1.2 billion worldwide, it continues to grow and Francis very clearly sees the opportunities.

The pontiff's visits to Thailand and Japan from Nov. 20-26 follow his journeys to South Korea for World Youth Day in 2014, Sri Lanka and the Philippines in early 2015 and Myanmar and Bangladesh in late 2017.

Each trip had its own unique triumphs and we can expect no less this time around, especially the Japan leg, which is heavy with both personal and thematic symbolism.

As Pope Francis prepares to embark on his fourth trip to Asia in the seventh year of his pontificate, he is delivering in a big way on the promise he made shortly after his election that he would make Asia a key focus of his papacy.

When he appointed Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle as head of Catholic aid agency Caritas Internationalis, the cardinal revealed that the pope had told him he wanted an Asian in the position because "the future of the Church is in Asia."

"It is not a matter of honour. Is it a challenge, a prophecy or a great calling? We do not know. But it is surely a matter of great responsibility, a great mission," the cardinal said.

And while the Church only has an estimated 120-140 million followers in North, Southeast and South Asia from about 1.2 billion worldwide, it continues to grow and Francis very clearly sees the opportunities.

The pontiff's visits to Thailand and Japan from Nov. 20-26 follow his journeys to South Korea for World Youth Day in 2014, Sri Lanka and the Philippines in early 2015 and Myanmar and Bangladesh in late 2017.

Each trip had its own unique triumphs and we can expect no less this time around, especially the Japan leg, which is heavy with both personal and thematic symbolism.

And on Sept. 22, 2018, the Vatican also inked a still-secret and controversial deal on the appointment of bishops with China. Movement on the provisional agreement has proved extremely slow on the Chinese side amid an escalation of Beijing's crackdown on religion, which is focused particularly on so-called "underground" Catholic and Protestant churches, whose followers number 60-100 million, as well as China's 22 million Muslims. It has also targeted young people.

It was in Seoul, during World Youth Day in August 2014, that it was clear Francis, only 17 months into his pontificate, was already a hugely popular pope, feted as something of a religious rock star by Catholic youth excited by the change from the deeply traditional and conservative papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

The importance of youth of saving the planet and creating a more modern Church for future generations has been a constant theme of Francis' papacy.

This is unlikely to stop as on most of his overseas visits he holds a special Mass for young people.

This will happen in Bangkok, while he will meet young Christians and non-Christians at St. Mary's Cathedral in Tokyo.

It was also en route to Seoul in August that Francis sent a telegram to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who had been elevated to secretary-general of the ruling Communist Party, about restarting talks with Beijing that had been dormant for almost a decade.

Francis' voyage to Thailand is the first by a pope since St. John Paul II visited in 1984.

His trip to Japan is the first by a pontiff since St. John Paul II visited in 1981 and represents the end of a long personal journey.

As a young priest, Francis had been determined to travel to Asia as a missionary. With his first choice of China unavailable because of the closing of the country to foreign missionaries and Catholic priests by the Communist Party, Japan became Francis' destination of choice.

"Over time, I felt the desire to go as a missionary to Japan, where the Jesuits have always carried out very important work," he wrote as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in his 2019 book El Jesuita. Bergoglio was diagnosed with a heart ailment and deemed physically unsuitable for missionary life, but it is something he has carried with him all his life.

Mission and evangelization

On overseas trips, particularly on visits to Asia, Francis often speaks about the importance of mission and evangelization.

Francis' travel schedule in Asia already compares favourably with that of the great travelling pope, St. John Paul II, despite his relative age as an octogenarian compared with the saint's youth at the start of his long pontificate.

Indeed, in visiting Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Francis made history with the first-ever papal visits to these countries.

The only Asian nations where St. John Paul II ventured that Francis has not yet visited are Timor-Leste, still at the time part of Indonesia when the Polish pope made a deeply historic visit in 1989, and India, where he undertook a substantial 10-day journey from north to south in 1986 and again to Delhi in 1999.

India is very much on Francis' wish list, something he has made very public, and the recalcitrance of the Indian government remains a sore point with the Vatican, especially since St. Teresa of Kolkata was canonized by Francis in 2016.

The Holy See failed last time, in 2017, to get the permission of the increasingly Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi, a knockback from which Myanmar reaped the benefits.

Now comfortably elected for a second term, Modi may find the temptation to have multiple photo opportunities with Pope Francis too hard to resist and see it as a way, perhaps, of deflecting his mounting programs of religious repression.

This is being writ large in Jammu and Kashmir, the disputed Muslim-majority state that in August had its autonomy revoked, sparking outcry across the globe.

But while India remains a disappointment to be resolved, we should note the successes of Francis' Asian visits.

He opened communications after many years of silence with Beijing — followed by a deal, however limited and initial — celebrated Sri Lanka's first saint, and made a triumphant visit to Asia's Catholic heartland of the Philippines, comforting victims of Typhoon Yolanda and pulling focus on the 2015 Year of the Poor.

In Myanmar and Bangladesh in late 2017, he played a delicate piece of two-step diplomacy, soft-pedaling in public over the then raw Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, where at both official and ground levels the actions of the army forced the troubled Muslim ethnic minority into Bangladesh.

But privately he is understood to have been far tougher with civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her military counterpart Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

He then triumphantly staged an ecumenical service in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, welcoming Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists on stage for prayers.

They included representatives from the Rohingya people, instantly silencing critics of his gently prodding stance in Myanmar.

In this way he shone an international spotlight on the crisis of up to one million refugees being forced from their homeland by a brutal military and a racist, increasingly religiously intolerant regime.

On the Japan leg of his forthcoming trip, he has similar opportunities for subtle but clear diplomatic messages — and who would bet against him taking them?

The Vatican's deal with China and the ongoing repression of Christians by North Korea's murderous regime will be lurking.

If he is trying to balance China's glacial progress on his bishop deal and its assault on worship of all religions by his mere presence in Japan — China's hated neighbour — he will already have hit the mark on the day the tour was announced.

It is not drawing too long a bow to see his appearances in Japan, where a stadium Mass in Nagasaki is already fully booked, as a test. Any Chinese reaction will give him a clue to where he really stands with Xi Jinping.

At a guess, Francis will, for sure, give the Chinese some face, wave hello at least and talk up his deal while he is being treated as a rock star and pressing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's flesh, surrounded by only one version of the church loyal only to Rome.

He will only be helped by the infectious enthusiasm of Japanese crowds who have shown, with the recent wildly successful Rugby World Cup, just how keen they are to embrace the new.

The Chinese, to put it mildly, will be put on the spot.

This is the first in a series of commentaries on Pope Francis' apostolic visit to Thailand and Japan and the issues around the journey.

• Michael Sainsbury is a journalist and photographer. He was commissioned by UCAN to write a series of comment pieces ahead of the Pope's visit to Asia.
• First published by UCANews.org. Republished with permission.

But the comparison appears to end right there — at least with reference to Thailand. The pope's trip to Japan has a point and it doesn't get much bigger than global peace.

Yet his visit to Thailand does not appear to have a point at all beyond some motherhood blandishments, and that is a big missed opportunity for the Vatican. The Holy See appears to be uncharacteristically dropping the ball on the Thai visit, but maybe for reasons that are beyond its control.

The message from the Vatican is as standard as it can get: "Christ's Disciples, Missionary Disciples." It's the 350th anniversary of the Vatican's mission to Thailand (formerly Siam) but most of the visit is stuffed with meetings with dignitaries, bishops and priests and the standard stadium Mass, a Mass for young people and a hospital visit. But that is it.

Like St. John Paul II, Pope Francis' trip to Japan has a singular and laser-focused point — peace and the end of war, which has tortured mankind since antiquity.

Pope Francis follows his predecessor to Nagasaki, where he will hold a Mass, and to Hiroshima, where he will hold a prayer service for peace. Like the saintly pontiff, Pope Francis will visit the shrines of 26 martyrs, heady stuff compared to Thailand, a last-minute add-on that has even bewildered some in Rome.

The Japan visit gains even more poignancy because it will take place in the shadow of nuclear-armed Russia, China and North Korea. And at a time when the United States has withdrawn from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty that bans land-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.

Russia remains in dispute with Japan over Kuril island and the two have a 200-kilometre maritime border. This will add huge weight to Pope Francis' visits to the nuclear-bombed cities of Japan and to the meetings with survivors and their families. In recent months, North Korea has seemed the most likely of those three nations to actually use a weapon if rhetoric is anything to go by. At the time of St. John Paul II's visit, the Cold War and its nuclear arms race were still raging. We do not learn, it seems, from even our very recent history.

Pope Francis' Thai schedule is disappointing. Many local clergy and lay Catholics lay the blame at the feet of Thailand's Cardinal Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovitvanit, who reportedly is not especially popular among his own clergy or the substantial number or foreign clergy in Bangkok.

Thailand is the regional hub for Catholic charity Caritas International and the Jesuit Refugee Service — these religious are peeved at being left out of proceedings. The only exception regarding the religious are the Jesuits, the pope's own order with whom he spends time on each international visit.

Indeed, the closest Pope Francis will come in Thailand, even vaguely, to the poor and dispossessed will be in the constrained environment of a Catholic hospital for the disabled.

Local Catholics are wondering why there is not a meeting with refugees, or a visit to a refugee camp, perhaps at Mae Sot or other refugee camps on the Myanmar-Thai border. After all, John Paul II spoke to refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in a camp south of Bangkok for several hours.

Refugees close to pope's heart

Thailand is the Southeast Asian epicentre for refugees, and there are hundreds of thousands of both registered and unregistered refugees in the country. The Catholic Church, led by the Jesuit Refugee Service, which has its Asian headquarters in Bangkok despite the country's tiny Catholic minority, has done long-term and consistent work helping these people.

It is arguable there is no issue closer to Pope Francis' heart than refugees. He has been a tireless advocate and supporter of dispossessed people. As he celebrated Mass in St. Peter's Square on the 105th World Day of Migrants and Refugees on Sept. 29, once again he denounced "the globalization of indifference" and said "a painful truth" is that "our world is daily more and more elitist, more cruel towards the excluded." The same might be said, about this trip, of the Thai Church.

Francis continued: "As Christians, we cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of old and new forms of poverty, to the bleak isolation, contempt and discrimination experienced by those who do not belong to our group," adding that "we cannot remain insensitive, our hearts deadened, before the misery of so many innocent people. We must not fail to weep. We must not fail to respond."

The plight of Pakistani Catholic refugees has been well documented in coverage that has been led by this very publication. This week we revealed that Pakistani Catholics in Bangkok are too afraid to attend the papal Masses. The Thai Church could help facilitate this, but it seems it is unwilling or perhaps fearful of upsetting the government with which it has cosy elitist ties at senior levels.

There are other issues very close to the pope's heart and mission that could be raised in Thailand and brought to life for a global audience in much the same way he did with the Rohingya crisis during his 2017 trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh.

There are the slave fishermen drawn from Burmese, Cambodia and Lao economic refugees who also work in often dangerous and underpaid construction jobs. He could remind the world of the Rohingya crisis ongoing over the border in Myanmar, and there are plenty of Rohingya refugees in Thailand along with scores who have perished in people-smuggling camps.

Then there is the sectarian conflict in the south between the Thai military and Muslim separatists that has claimed tens of thousands of lives — a conflict that fits in with the message of peace Francis will take to Japan.

Pope Francis could bookend his trip with a visit to the excellent Hellfire Pass Burma Railway Museum, another look at the Japanese war experience that would help him better understand what life was like as a prisoner of the Japanese, and how their notorious brutality was probably one of the reasons the Americans dropped nuclear bombs instead of sacrificing more of their own.

In doing so, he could highlight the stunning forgiveness that has come from Australian, British, New Zealand and Asian civilians.

Each one of these is a singular and powerful missed opportunity.

The soft schedule in Thailand could change, of course — and this is where Francis could work his special magic.

Indeed, ucanews understands that questions are already being asked in Rome.

This pope has a habit of getting personally involved in his international travel; he sidestepped normal diplomatic channels to get to Myanmar and has a habit of making even the most apparently anodyne situations suddenly work so well for him, exemplified by his visit to the Mexico-US border. Celebrating Mass in Ciudad Juarez, he offered a stinging critique of leaders on both sides of the border, saying that the "forced migration" of thousands of Central Americans is a "human tragedy" and "humanitarian crisis."

So maybe Thailand should prepare for a surprise.

• Michael Sainsbury is a journalist and photographer. He was commissioned by UCAN to write a series of comment pieces ahead of the Pope's visit to Asia.
• First published by UCANews.org. Republished with permission.