It is not unusual to find a Catholic going giddy over Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Singapore, but one Hindu youth – 28-year-old Shukul Raaj Kumar – also cannot wait to create a beautiful moment with the pontiff.
His opportunity will come on Sept 13, when he shares the stage with the Pope, Mr Shukul was handpicked to be part of a small panel of young people who will engage the Pope at an inter-religious meeting at Catholic Junior College.
The event, which takes place on the final day of the Pope’s 12-day Asia-Pacific tour, has been described by some observers as the most unusual item on his three-day Singapore itinerary. It will be attended by more than 600 participants, with the majority being young people from more than 50 schools and interfaith and religious organisations.
As far as Mr Shukul understands, he was picked because of his significant contributions to interfaith dialogue in Singapore and abroad. Now serving as the chief coordinator of the Inter-Religious Organisation’s youth wing, which has 134 young people from 10 religions, he continues to advocate for interfaith engagement and understanding.
Mr Shukul – an assistant manager in SGTech, a trade association for Singapore’s tech industry – recalled the moment in late July when he first received news about the opportunity.
First came shock, an immense rush of gratitude, then pressure. “It is a huge honour and, of course, I want to do it full justice,” he told The Straits Times.
Behind this pressure is also a quiet knowing that no amount of preparation will be enough for a moment like this.
“It’s like ban men nong fu lah!” he quipped, the Chinese idiom tripping off his tongue – he picked up Chinese as his second language, instead of Hindi, from the age of four. The idiom speaks of the foolish act of displaying one’s slight skill before an expert.
“He (the Pope) is doing so much more,” he added. “If you (have) read up about him extensively, you’d know about his work with different communities.
“Here is someone who has braved through life, doing what is good and what is right. To come in the presence of such a being, it really makes me feel ‘who am I’, and ‘what have I done thus far’.”
Mr Shukul said he read up about Pope Francis’ life before the latter became the head of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, as well as some of the letters and encyclicals he has written since. This includes the Fratelli Tutti, a key document where the Pope laid out the need for universal brotherhood and social friendship.
He added that these had him thinking about the groupthink and herd mentality present in society today, where communities retreat inwards and believe that their only source of safety or refuge is in clinging to their own members.
“What that then does is create a lot more gaps, a lot more areas for agitation, for animosity, for not humanising the other, and that is when society starts to fracture,” he said.
He added that it would be a frightening day if such fractures become entrenched in Singapore, saying: “To have this idea that you are distinct and, therefore, are not deserving of my love, my care, my embrace, my engagement, I think that is a very dangerous idea to have.”
Mr Shukul said he identifies with the Pope as the 87-year-old Argentinian had often chosen to take the initiative to reach out to other communities.
This is, in many ways, “flipping the script”, he added. “When you open up and demonstrate that vulnerability in speaking to them, you will also start to recognise that communities are much more open to speaking with you than what you’d like to think.”
And this has worked for the Pope as he has genuinely shown love, respect and care to the communities and their identities, instead of taking a top-down approach, Mr Shukul pointed out.
Asked why such an approach makes a difference, he said: “When you genuinely show that respect, you awaken this autonomy within communities to embrace their best selves.”
On why this topic concerns the youth in particular, he said they face greater danger of being stuck in their own bubbles as they grow up with social media, with even the best of them not escaping the invisible forces of algorithms on these platforms.
A big question is “how do we ensure that we continue to humanise each other and be not xiu shou pang guan”, he said, whipping out another Chinese idiom, this time referring to the act of watching another with folded arms instead of extending a hand.
Mr Clement Onn, the director of the Asian Civilisation Museum (ACM) and Peranakan Museum, is another non-Catholic who is in full anticipation of the Pope’s visit.
The 44-year-old, who was raised a Taoist, said he feels connected to the Pope as they share a common mission: providing a safe platform for interfaith dialogue.
He had a chance to study the Pope’s work when he was attached to one of the Vatican Museums’ 54 galleries for a month in 2014 as part of his work as a curator looking after the cross-cultural segment of ACM.
He was tagged to the Anima Mundi ethnological museum, which partly showcases Asian Christian art. Its name, coined by Pope Francis in 2019, is Italian for “soul of the world”.
Mr Onn, who had unsuccessfully balloted for a ticket to the papal mass at the National Stadium on Sept 12, said he developed an appreciation for the Pope’s messages of acceptance, peace and unity during this internship.
These themes are universal and mirror what ACM seeks to convey through the 50-odd artefacts it displays at its own Christian art gallery, he added.
He said the Pope’s interfaith work is a continuation of what Christian missionaries in the 16th century did, as evidenced in the archival letters between them and Chinese Confucian scholars and Japanese Buddhist monks.
He reckoned museums’ work to be no different.
Said Mr Onn: “If stepping into a religious institution is too much for most people to make the first step, maybe the museum could be that space to get people to drop their guard and break down certain feelings – be it ego, pride or whatever – to really have that dialogue to understand each other.”
Mr Onn said not having such a dialogue risks having the next generation take the peace and harmony that have been achieved in Singapore for granted.
Singapore started as a “rojak” of migrant communities and being a multiracial, multicultural society is thus the “quintessential DNA of Singaporeans” that should be preserved for generations to come, he added.
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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.
