Pope tells people of Vanimo: ‘You are experts in beauty‘

By Linda Bordoni – Vanimo

Watching the people of Papua New Guinea welcome their Pope is a powerful experience.

Having the privilege of travelling, together with a very restricted pool of journalists, to the remote northwestern city of Vanimo to witness the groundswell of joy and gratitude from some of the most “isolated” people in the world, is an emotion I will never forget.

At the airport in Port Moresby, after morning Mass in the Stadium, we watched a remarkable-looking team of Australian Special Forces members board the military plane which flew the Pope.

And when we bundled into a separate flight aboard an Air Niugini Fokker 70 aircraft for a two-and-a-half flight to Vanimo—that is practically unreachable by road—I was prepared for a wonderful show of gratitude and joy for the Successor of Peter’s visit, but not for the sheer power and beauty of a pristine land and of a people who clearly thirst for God.

The people are gorgeous. They bear their tribal ancestry and culture with pride. They turned out in all of their glory for Pope Francis, wearing feathers, flowers, leaves, shells, claws and superbly crafted ornaments. One man was wearing a sort of woven basket around his head filled with the tropical fruits of this beautiful land, with two tiny spaces for his eyes. An incredible testimony of his people’s umbilical tie with the earth and its gifts, an ode to “Laudato sì”.

All this splendour and the powerful beauty of the nature were not lost on the Pope. He accepted the tribal gifts crafted especially for him, watched his hosts perform ancient dances and listened to the missionaries who run the parishes and schools telling him that many had walked for days, through thick jungle and across rivers and mountains to see their “father”, to be in the same place as he.

To the missionaries he said: “You are doing something beautiful, and it is important that you are not left alone.”

To the people he said: “You are experts in beauty” because you live on this piece of earth that seems the Garden of Eden. But he continued “the greatest treasure is to be found in your hearts.”

To both he said: “The beauty of love can heal the world.”