Pope to meet victims of Typhoon ‘Yolanda’

Pope Francis. AP

VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis will celebrate Mass and host a luncheon for Filipino survivors of the deadly Typhoon “Yolanda” (Haiyan) during his January 12-19 visit to Sri Lanka and the  Philippines, his second visit to Asia in a year that confirms the region is a priority of his pontificate.

The Vatican on Friday released the itinerary for the pope’s visit, which comes just five months after his August pilgrimage to South Korea.

Francis first flies to Colombo, where he will canonize Sri Lanka’s first saint, the Rev. Giuseppe Baz, a 17th-century missionary credited with reviving the Catholic faith in the country.

The pope arrives in Manila on Jan. 15 and two days later flies to the central city of Tacloban, hardest hit by the Nov. 8, 2013, typhoon that left more than 7,300 people dead or missing. There he will celebrate Mass, host a luncheon and meet with survivors.

He’ll also inaugurate a center for the poor named in his honor.

His final public event is a Mass in Manila’s Riza Park on Jan. 18. While no crowd estimates are yet available, Francis has a daunting challenge to meet:

When St. John Paul II visited the  Philippines  in 1995, he drew 5 million people to his main Mass, a record that no pope has since matched. But Francis just may, given his enormous popularity in a country that appreciates his attention to the poor.

Asia is widely considered to be the future of the Catholic Church, growing there while it withers in traditionally Christian Europe. Despite being a minority religion in every Asian nation except thePhilippines, which is predominantly Roman Catholic, the Catholic Church baptizes more Catholics in Asia every year than in Europe, according to Vatican statistics.