Pope Francis' itinerary in Singapore to include a papal mass at National Stadium where 40,000 tickets are available through balloting

SINGAPORE - Pope Francis will head to St Theresa's Home and Catholic Junior College, and celebrate mass at the National Stadium during his three-day visit to Singapore in September.

The pontiff will be in Singapore from Sept 11 to Sept 13, in the last leg of an Asia-Pacific tour, which will also include Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. The Pope's programme in each country is outlined in detail in an itinerary issued by the Vatican on July 5.

The pontiff is expected to touch down at Changi Airport at 2.15pm on Sept 11, and later that day, will hold a private meeting with members of the Society of Jesus or Jesuits - a Roman Catholic order - at the St Francis Xavier Retreat Centre in Punggol.

On Sept 12, Pope Francis, 87, will attend a welcome ceremony in Parliament House at 9am, after which he will call on President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, before meeting Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.

Later in the day, he will meet members of civil society, the diplomatic corps and others at the University Cultural Centre at the National University of Singapore.

The Pope, who is the head of the Roman Catholic Church, will wrap up the second day of the papal visit by celebrating mass at the National Stadium.

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On his last day in Singapore, the pontiff will visit St Theresa's Home - a Catholic welfare nursing home in Upper Thomson for the elderly and aged sick - before an inter-religious meeting with young people at Catholic Junior College.

He will then attend a farewell ceremony at 11.20am at Changi Airport before leaving for Rome.

Registration for the papal mass ballot began on June 24 and will close on July 31.

More than 40,000 tickets will be available to the public in an online exercise that is open to anyone in Singapore with a valid account on the myCatholicSG portal.

Before arriving in Singapore, Pope Francis will kick off his visit to the region in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Sept 3.

On Sept 6, the pontiff will fly to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, before leaving for Dili, capital of Timor-Leste, on Sept 9.

The last time a pope visited Singapore was in 1986, when the late John Paul II made a five-hour stopover, and celebrated mass at the old National Stadium, which drew about 70,000 people.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.