Pope Francis on Thursday urged political leaders in Singapore, a leading global financial hub, to seek fair wages for the country’s million-plus lower-paid foreign workers.
In likely the last major speech of an ambitious 12-day tour across Southeast Asia and Oceania, the 87-year-old pontiff singled out concern for Singapore’s rapidly aging population and its migrant workforce, primarily centered in the construction and domestic services industries.
“I hope that special attention will be paid to the poor and the elderly … as well as to protecting the dignity of migrant workers,” the pope said in an address to about 1,000 politicians and civil and religious leaders at the National University of Singapore.
Photo: AFP
“These workers contribute a great deal to society and should be guaranteed a fair wage,” he said.
There were 1.1 million foreigners on work permits in Singapore who earned less than S$3,000 (US$2,300) per month as of December last year, including 286,300 domestic workers and 441,100 workers in the construction, shipyard and process sectors, government data showed.
Many of the migrant workers come from nearby countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, China, Bangladesh and India.
Francis’ speech came after private meetings with Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) at the country’s parliament building, where the pope was greeted with a formal honor guard and the playing of the Vatican anthem.
He was also presented with a white orchid plant, a new hybrid that was named in his honor.
Concern for migrants has been a common theme for Francis. Earlier on his 12-day tour, he asked leaders in Papua New Guinea to work for fair wages as that country becomes a major target of international companies for its gas, gold and other reserves.
Francis, who has prioritized trips to places never visited by a pope, or where Catholics are a small minority, is only the second pope to visit Singapore, following a brief five-hour layover by the late John Paul II in 1986.
Singapore, with a population of 5.92 million, is plurality Buddhist, with about 31 percent of people identifying with that faith.
The Vatican has about 210,000 Catholics in the country. There are also strong Muslim, Hindu and Taoist communities.
Francis praised the country as “a mosaic of ethnicities, cultures and religions living together in harmony,” and said the political officials were “preventing extremism and intolerance from gaining strength or endangering social harmony”.
Later yesterday, Francis celebrated a Mass at Singapore’s national sports stadium, which drew about 50,000 people, including Catholics who traveled from Hong Kong for the event.
The Vatican is currently renegotiating a controversial deal with China over the appointment of Catholic bishops in the country, which is up for renewal next month.
Francis’ 12-day tour has also included stops in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and East Timor.
He returns to Rome today.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done