While Indonesia's Catholic community is only 3 per cent of the population, it still numbers in the millions and plenty of its members will be travelling to Jakarta for the pope's four-day visit.
Of all the places in the world where the pope would address more than 60,000 people in a stadium for mass, Muslim-majority Indonesia might not come to mind.
And like that trip, this visit will include mass at Jakarta's Gloria Bung Karno stadium, with 60,000 Catholics inside plus another 26,000 at an adjacent smaller stadium. Catholics only account for 3 per cent of Indonesians, but that is still more than 8-9 million people in total — more than the number in Australia.
He said that could explain the Vatican's decision that the pope should visit three developing neighbouring countries, but not Australia. "But we have to be up-front that you occasionally get incidents here and there in some parts of the country."
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