'Not easy': Pope Francis leaves for Rome after 12-day Asia trip

By Joshua McElwee

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT (Reuters) - Pope Francis left Singapore for Rome on Friday, after a demanding trip across Southeast Asia and Oceania in which he urged action on climate change, pressed for interfaith dialogue, and reinforced the Catholic Church's presence in a region where it is a small minority.

The Singapore Airlines flight carrying the Catholic pontiff and his entourage took off around 12:25 p.m. (0425 GMT) in Singapore and is due to arrive in Rome on Friday evening, after a 12-hour flight through six time zones.

Francis visited Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore over a span of 12 days. The 87-year-old pope, who in recent years has suffered bouts of ill health, appeared in good form throughout the trip, maintaining a packed schedule and headlining more than 40 events.

Highlights of the journey included a trip to a township of some 12,000 people on the edge of the Papua New Guinean jungle, in which the pope brought hundreds of kilograms of items to help support the local population, including medicines, clothing and toys for children.

The pope also celebrated a Mass in East Timor with a crowd of some 600,000 people, nearly half the country's population of 1.3 million, in one of the largest ever turnouts as a proportion of a country's population for a Mass during a papal visit.

East Timor, 96% Catholic, was the only Catholic majority country of the pope's tour.

Francis' 12-day trip was the longest yet of his papacy, and among the longest in papal history. Upon landing in Rome, Francis will have clocked nearly 33,000 km (20,500 miles).

The pope, who suffers from knee and back pain, used a wheelchair throughout the trip. He kept all his scheduled appointments.

In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, Francis issued a joint declaration with the national grand imam calling for global climate action.

In Singapore, he urged the government in one of the world's leading financial hubs to seek fair wages for the country's million-plus lower-paid foreign workers.

Francis has prioritised trips to places never visited by a pope, or where Catholics are a small minority. He was only the second pope to visit three of the four countries on his itinerary.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis offered a small insight into how he thinks of the task of leading the 1.4-billion-member global Catholic Church, and visiting Catholics around the world.

In a spontaneous comment to a group of young people, he made a usual request that they pray for him. And then, emphasizing his need for prayers, he added: "This job is not easy."

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by John Mair)