Eleven years into his papacy, it’s the same old Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Pope Francis, who was known to take city buses when he was Buenos Aires archbishop, stayed true to form and refused a luxury car during his trip to Indonesia.
The 87-year-old Pope instead “chose a Toyota Innova, a vehicle commonly used by Indonesians,” reported the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday, September 3.
The Toyota Innova Zenix, which the Pope used in Indonesia, ranges from P1.67 million to P1.9 million ($29,500 to $34,500) in the Philippines.
Indonesia — while being the world’s 10th largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, according to the World Bank — now has a shrinking middle class population. This “is ringing alarm bells in the country,” Channel News Asia reported last week.
In this context, the Pope’s refusal of a luxury car becomes more relevant.
“The choice of vehicle was based on the Vatican’s specific request for an ordinary, commonly used car. We were happy to accommodate this,” said the commander of Indonesia’s presidential security force, Major General Achiruddin, as quoted by the Jakarta Globe.
The only indication that the Innova was carrying a VIP was its special license plate — “SCV 1,” which means “Status Civitatis Vaticanae (Vatican City State) 1” — the same plate the Pope uses at the Vatican.
Photos of the Pope’s first full day in Indonesia on Wednesday, September 4, showed him riding the Toyota Innova in the passenger seat, not at the back like other VIPs.
Jakarta Globe reported, however, that the Pope will ride “a custom-made, bullet-proof tactical vehicle with a detachable roof,” known as the Maung MV3, when he meets a larger crowd at the Bung Karno Stadium on Thursday, September 5.
In terms of accommodation, the Pope requested to stay at the apostolic nunciature, or the Vatican’s embassy in Jakarta, instead of a five-star hotel. “He will reside at the Vatican embassy in Indonesia, while his entourage will stay in hotels,” said Jakarta Archbishop Ignatius Cardinal Suharyo in the same Indonesian news report.
Francis is staying in Indonesia from September 3 to 6 as part of a two-week trip to Asia-Pacific, the longest journey of his 11-year-old papacy.
After Indonesia, he is visiting Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore, but is skipping Catholic-majority Philippines because he wants to focus on countries where the Catholic Church has a smaller flock.
On Wednesday, the Pope met with Indonesian president Joko Widodo and paid tribute to common Indonesians and their time-tested values.
“One could almost say that, just as the ocean is the natural element that unites all the Indonesian islands, so mutual respect for the specific cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious characteristics of all the human groups that make up Indonesia is the indispensable connective tissue to make the Indonesian people united and proud,” the Pope said in his speech.
The Pope’s words and actions in Indonesia are no surprise from a pontiff who, aside from being the first from Latin America, is also a Jesuit. The Jesuit religious order (whose Indonesian members the Pope also met on Wednesday) is known for a spirituality of “meeting people where they are.”
Ah, if only politicians could learn from the Pope! – Rappler.com