ROME – If ever proof were needed of Pope Francis’s indefatigable commitment to outreach, the fact that today he's in Vanimo in Papua New Guinea, the most remote corner of a country which already represents the world’s peripheries, to meet with people utterly unaccustomed to having world leaders come calling, surely delivers it.
This is a pope, in other words, literally willing to go the extra mile for an outstretched hand. From another part of the world, however, recent days also have offered the pontiff a reminder of a hard truth about such outreach, which is that sometimes when you extend your hand, the other party is more inclined to slap it away than to grasp it.
