Pope emphasizes ‘Singapore’s Ageing Population’ and ‘Migrant Workers’ fair wages

Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of the Vatican City. Pope visits Singapore on his 45th Apostolic journey abroad. The Holy visit of the Head of the Catholic Church abroad is called the “Apostolic Journey”. On his 3-day visit to Singapore, Pope Francis landed at Dili, the capital city of Timor-Leste or East Timor from there he reached Singapore with his Vatican staff and officials on Wednesday.

He had a private meeting with the members of the Society of Jesus at the St.Francis Xavier retreat center on his first-day journey. It is located in the heart of Singapore. 25 Jesuits attended the meeting most of them were Singaporeans and a few were from Malaysia. Father Antonio Spadaro said,

“The Pope made it clear that faith must enter into the human challenges, and stressed the importance of Asia today as a key continent”

He added more about the meeting in his X post and the pictures taken during the Jesuit meeting.

On Thursday at 10.30 a.m. both Pope Francis and the President of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam met each other and had a meeting with authorities, diplomatic corps, and civil society at the National University of Singapore. Pope emphasized fair wages for migrant workers and the ageing population. During the early 19th century Singapore was an island without a proper infrastructure. Later, the arrival of foreign workers, contract employees, and migrants contributed a lot to the development of the country. Now, Singapore is a wealthy nation with 40% of the working community including foreign workers. These workers had been restricted from bringing their families to Singapore to stay here. He also added in his speech about the urge to focus on the elderly and poor people who laid the foundations for Singapore’s drastic progress from scratch. Their population is estimated to be 170 million, among which the population of migrants who deal with low fair-wage is 300,000. The migrant population hails from South Asia and majorly from the Philippines who are notably devoted to Catholic.

“These workers contribute a great deal to society and should be guaranteed a fair wage”, he added.