CNN
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He is 87 years old, has been struggling with health problems for several years and is now in a wheelchair. But Pope Francis is currently on the longest journey of his pontificate.

He landed in Indonesia on Tuesday, starting a 12-day marathon visit to four countries in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.

It is one of the longest foreign trips ever undertaken by a pope and marks the greatest geographical distance (32,814 kilometers or around 20,000 miles) that Francis has traveled since his election in 2013. And upon arriving in Jakarta, Pope Francis said the more than 13-hour flight was the longest he had ever taken.

The historic visit will give the Pope the opportunity to highlight central themes of his pontificate, including interreligious dialogue and environmental protection.

The trip also underscores a significant shift within the Catholic Church: its turn toward Asia.

During his pontificate, Francis visited 44 countries, including South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh. He also appointed cardinals from the Philippines (Luis Antonio Tagle) and South Korea (Lazarus You Heung-sik) to senior positions in the central administration of the Church.

The Catholic Church is no longer a Eurocentric or Western institution, but one in which churches from Asia, Africa and Latin America are increasingly heard. Francis, who as a young man wanted to be a missionary in Japan, has spoken positively about male and female church leaders from countries outside Europe.

“Asia has always been one of Francis’ priorities,” Father Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official and close adviser to the pope, told CNN.

Although Catholics are often in the minority in Asia, they often do an above-average job when it comes to running schools and charitable work.

“The Pope is not so much concerned with the number of Catholics as with their vitality,” said Spadaro, who will accompany Francis on his trip. In many Asian countries, the Jesuit priest explained, the Church is trying to act as a “leaven” and serve the “common good,” while Asia “currently represents the future of the world.”

Since churches in Asia are often a minority, they place great value on dialogue with other religions. This aspect will also be a central theme of the trip.

During his stay in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, the pope will attend a meeting with religious leaders at Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia. Francis will then sign an interfaith declaration with Indonesia’s Grand Imam and is also expected to visit an underpass that connects the mosque to the Catholic cathedral next door, known as the “Tunnel of Friendship.”

“Indonesia and Singapore are countries where the need to negotiate harmonious coexistence with other religions and with the wider community is an ongoing concern,” Christina Kheng, a Singaporean Catholic theologian who teaches at the East Asian Pastoral Institute, told CNN. “What gets left behind is the dialogue that Catholics have in their everyday lives with people of all faiths.”

“The pulse of the churches here is very different from that in Europe or the US, for example, where issues such as polarisation, secularisation and abuse dominate the headlines,” she added.

Spadaro said the Pope wanted to “set a sign of dialogue with Islam,” pointing out that the government in East Timor had adopted a landmark document on human fraternity – signed by Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb – as a national text.

East Timor is unusual in Asia in that 97% of the population identify as Catholic, the highest proportion outside the Vatican City.

Michel Chambon, an expert on Asian Catholicism at the National University of Singapore, said the Pope’s visit would help build relations and mutual understanding with these countries.

“The crucial point is that the Vatican is not a European state, it is much more than that,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Vatican’s relations with China, an officially atheist state where religious practice is severely restricted by the government, will take a back seat during this visit as Francis pushes ahead with efforts to revive diplomatic relations with Beijing.

Catholicism is one of five officially recognized religions in China. Yet for decades, the state-recognized Catholic churches were led by bishops appointed by Beijing, not the Holy See, until the two sides reached an agreement in 2018. Details of the deal have never been made public, and many in China’s underground communities, which have remained loyal to Rome and have long faced persecution, fear being abandoned.

Although the agreement between the Holy See and China has been met with criticism, the Vatican says the deal is already paying off and hopes to open a permanent office in China. The Pope has repeatedly stated that he would like to visit the country.

Supporters of the strategy of patient diplomacy point to the Holy See’s improved relations with another communist-ruled country: Vietnam. After years of talks, the Pope was able to appoint the first ambassador to Hanoi at the end of last year.

Francis’ trip will also see him visit a part of the world threatened by rising sea levels and natural disasters: Papua New Guinea is a country on the front lines of the climate crisis. Throughout his pontificate, the Pope has insisted that protecting the planet is an urgent moral issue, and his trip to the Pacific is an opportunity to once again urge world leaders to take stronger action.

This long journey now, after more than 11 years as pope, is a message to those, even in the highest levels of the Church, who hope this pontificate is running out of steam. Spadaro says it underscores the “vitality of the pontificate at this moment.”

Francis will travel, as usual, with a doctor and two nurses. At his age, such a long and tiring visit is fraught with risks. But this Pope is willing to take risks and surprise. And he is determined to undertake one of the most ambitious trips of his pontificate.