JAKARTA: When Pope Francis visits Indonesia next week, he will stop by a mosque in Jakarta that has an unusual feature — a tunnel connecting it to the city’s Catholic cathedral, as part of a push for interfaith harmony on his 12-day Asia-Pacific tour.
The 28.3-meter “Tunnel of Friendship,” connecting the iconic Istiqlal mosque to the Our Lady of the Assumption cathedral, was built by the government in 2020 as a symbol of religious harmony, a theme the global head of the Catholic church has also emphasized on his travels during his 11-year reign.
Pope Francis, 87, arrives on Tuesday in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, on the first leg of the longest trip of his papacy that will also take him to Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore. The plans have drawn concerns over his increasing health problems.
The pope is scheduled to participate in an interfaith meeting at the mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia, and to visit the tunnel, which features windows to let in light and inscribed art on the walls but is not yet open to the public.
“It’s extraordinary that the Catholics’ number one figure is coming,” said Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam of the Istiqlal, whose vast parking lot is often open to churchgoers during major events. “Whatever your religion is, let’s respect our guest.”
Only about 3 percent of Indonesia’s population of 280 million are Catholic, while nearly 90 percent are Muslim.
The pope is scheduled to meet outgoing President Joko Widodo and hold a mass service at a Jakarta stadium, which is expected to be attended by more than 80,000 people, said Rev. Thomas Ulun Ismoyo, an Indonesian church official.

The visit has excited Indonesian Catholics, who have not experienced a papal visit in more than three decades.
“If I could meet him, I could only bow before him. I couldn’t even bring myself to hold his hand,” said Maria Regina Widyastuti Sasongko, a 77-year-old Catholic woman who sells items such as statues and t-shirts bearing the pope’s face.
Indonesia has been visited by two popes before — the first, Pope Paul VI in a 1970 trip to Jakarta and in 1989, Pope John Paul II, who visited Jakarta and four other cities.

Symbol of friendship; chequered past
Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, Indonesia’s religious affairs minister, said the pope’s visit was a symbol of friendship among people of all religions in Indonesia.
“The pope’s visit makes Indonesia the barometer of peace and a pillar of tolerance,” he told Reuters.
Still Indonesia has had a chequered history with religious harmony.

Catholicism came to the country by way of Portuguese missionaries in its eastern area in the 16th century, but historians say it was banned during Dutch colonial rule for about two centuries in favor of Protestantism.
The Vatican officially named a diplomatic representative in Indonesia in the 1940s.
And in modern Indonesia, officially a secular state, minority religions can still face discrimination.
The US religious freedom watchdog has said that “Indonesia’s religious freedom conditions remained poor” in 2023, citing several regulations including ones that led to closures of places of worship, including churches.
Andreas Harsono, the Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the roots of religious intolerance, and church closures, were the laws that facilitate them.
But for Sasongko, the Catholic woman selling papal merchandise, the arrival of the pope signifies hope for unity.
“His visit can transform people to love one another,” she said.

MOSCOW: France’s arrest of Telegram chief Pavel Durov has raised fears in Russia that the popular messaging app — used both by the Kremlin and its opponents — could be blocked, depriving them of one of the last sources of critical, uncensored news.
Since the start of its offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has cracked down on dissent and protest, leaving Russians without independent news outlets or access to Western social media such as Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly Twitter.
In that climate, Telegram — which was itself blocked for a period by the Kremlin for refusing to cooperate with Russian law enforcement agencies — has become one of the last bastions of free speech and uncensored information.
Moscow now fears for the fate of the messenger and its Russian-born founder Durov, charged late August with failing to curb extremist and illegal content on the platform.
Though he has been released on bail, he cannot leave the country and the Kremlin has warned France against turning the case against him “into political persecution.”
Durov’s arrest is not the only headache the privately-owned service faces.
The European Commission is also investigating whether Telegram has more EU users than claimed and must therefore comply with more stringent rules.

In Russia, Telegram channels widely cover subjects that are otherwise strictly censored in state media.
That includes everything from front-line reports of the conflict in Ukraine to trials of Kremlin critics and manifestos dispatched from political prisoners.
The most popular channels have millions of subscribers.
The Kremlin, government ministries and regional governors also use Telegram as their go-to public communications tool.
“Telegram is a very practical and reliable messaging service for all Russians, regardless of their political opinions,” said Alexei Venediktov, head of the Echo of Moscow radio station, blocked in Russia after its criticism of the Ukraine offensive.
The messaging service “is considered independent of the Russian state,” the veteran journalist — who has over 200,000 subscribers there — told AFP.
Blocking Telegram would be equivalent to “a measure of censorship,” he said.

Telegram’s popularity has grown steadily in Russia throughout the Ukraine conflict, after Russia blocked access to Instagram, Facebook and X, as well as the websites of several opposition media outlets.
It is the fourth most popular online service, ahead of YouTube and the Russian social network VKontakte, according to a study by Russian media research group Mediascope.
It is also heavily focused on news. Two-thirds of its Russian readers prefer to follow political and news channels, with only six percent preferring entertainment or cinema, for instance.
Mila, a 45-year-old psychologist, said she started using it after Facebook was blocked and she now subscribes to some 80 Telegram news channels. She also uses it to communicate privately with friends who are against the offensive in Ukraine.
“Today, it is my main source of information. If Telegram stops working, it will hurt me a lot,” Mila told AFP, speaking on condition her full name not be used.
Naida, a 56-year-old logistician said she trusts Telegram more than other messaging services.
“And all the news is there, you don’t need to have a VPN on all the time,” she said.
Telegram is now “the main source of information” for those seeking independent views, said political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
“Telegram has no alternative” in Russia, she said, adding the free flow of information on the service is a throwback to before President Vladimir Putin began to crack down hard on dissent.

Amid the conflict in Ukraine, the platform has also become a key military communication tool.
Both Russia and Ukraine warn their populations of incoming air attacks via Telegram posts, while their armies use it to communicate and coordinate internally.
“Telegram has almost become the main way of commanding units on both sides of the front,” said Mikhail Zvinchuk, a former military officer whose Telegram blog on the conflict, Rybar, has more than 1.3 million subscribers.
Pro-Kremlin Russian journalist Andrei Medvedev also said Telegram was “the main messaging service” of the conflict.
“It is an alternative to the secret military communication system,” he said.
Thanks to its broad appeal across the political spectrum, the fate of Durov and the implications for the site have become a rare point of unifying concern.
Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, recently released as part of a historic prisoner exchange with the West, is among those who have taken Durov’s side.
“I do not consider Pavel Durov a criminal, and I hope that he will be able to prove his innocence,” Yashin said.