Scottish Catholic Observer

Pope Francis has said he feels ‘joy’ at the prospect of beginning his trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines this evening.

Speaking to an annual gathering of diplomats at the Vatican this morning the Pope said ‘this evening I will have the joy of setting off once more for Asia, to visit Sri Lanka and the Philippines as a sign of my interest and pastoral concern for the people of that vast continent’.

“To them and to their governments I wish to voice yet again the desire of the Holy See to offer its own contribution of service to the common good, to harmony and social concord,” he said. “In particular, I express my hope for a resumption of dialogue between the two Koreas, sister countries which speak the same language.”

The Pope will be welcomed in Sri Lanka tomorrow morning by the country’s new president, Maithripala Sirisena, who was only sworn in on Friday after beating the long-standing incumbent, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

During his three days in the country the Pope will canonise Sri Lanka’s first saint, Blessed Joseph Vaz, an Oratorian priest and missionary during the Dutch occupation of the 17th century on Wednesday at 8.30am (2.30am GMT).

He will also visit Sri Lanka’s most revered Marian shrine, the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Rosary at Madhu, in the north of the country later that day.

During his three days in the Philippines, meanwhile, the Pope will spend one day in Tacloban, the region devastated by typhoon Haiyan. He will have lunch with survivors and meet priests and religious at a cathedral wrecked by the typhoon.

In Manila Pope Francis will meet families whose members have been separated by economic migration and will address a gathering of young people.

The Pope is likely to draw millions of pilgrims during his trip. When St John Paul II visited the Philippines in 1995 his final Mass was attended by five million people.

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