VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis leaves on Monday for a visit to four island nations across southeast Asia, an ambitious trip to urge global action on climate change that may test the strength of the 87-year-old head of the global Catholic Church.

Over 12 days from Sept. 2-13, Pope Francis will travel nearly 33,000 km (20,500 miles) to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. It is the longest trip yet by the pontiff, who now regularly uses a wheelchair due to knee and back pain.

Pope Francis pushed hard for the 2015 Paris climate agreement and aides say he wants to continue his appeals to confront the dangers of a rapidly warming world, and especially to support the most vulnerable. In the countries on his tour, these dangers include rising sea levels and increasingly severe and unpredictable heat waves and typhoons.

Jakarta, the Indonesian capital where the trip begins, has experienced disastrous flooding in recent years and is slowly sinking, prompting the government to build a new $32-billion capital on Borneo.

Pope Francis is scheduled to headline more than 40 events during the voyage and some observers say that, beyond his specific itinerary, he wants to show he is still capable of leading the 1.4-billion-member Church, despite his age and bouts of ill health.

“It is a show of strength for Pope Francis,” said Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who has followed the papacy closely.

WHAT DOES THE POPE HOPE TO ACHIEVE?
Mr. Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University in Philadelphia, noted that no pope had toured abroad at such an age. Pope Benedict XVI, Francis’ immediate predecessor, resigned at 85. Pope John Paul II, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, made his last visit abroad at 84.

The tour will be Francis’ 45^th foreign trip since his election in March 2013. He speaks often about reaching out to people or groups on the margins of society, and has prioritized trips to places never before visited by a pope, or where Catholics are a small minority.

“Francis has almost drawn a new map of the Church,” said Mr. Faggioli. “It’s global Catholicism now, a Church that it is not just more globally extensive, but truly globalized.”

Also on the agenda is a renewed push for Catholic-Muslim dialogue, long a priority for Pope Francis who, in 2019, became the first pope to visit the Arabian peninsula.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, has about 280 million inhabitants, only about 3% of them Catholic. Pope Francis will take part in an interfaith meeting at Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia.

Jeremy Menchik, a political scientist professor at Boston University who has written extensively on Indonesia’s politics, said it was in a “golden age” of interfaith dialogue, noting that the mosque sits opposite Jakarta’s Catholic cathedral.

“This is a moment where you have pluralism rather than polemics,” he said.

Pope Francis lands in Jakarta at about midday on Tuesday, and departs for Papua New Guinea three days later. To allow him to rest after a night-flight of more than 13 hours, he will have no public activities on Tuesday, apart from a brief official welcome at the airport.

WHY HAS THE POPE CHOSEN ASIA?
In each of the four countries, the pope will hold official meetings with political authorities, diplomats, and local Catholics. He will also lead outdoor celebrations of the Catholic Mass in all four countries.

Catholic officials broadly see Asia as fertile ground to expand the faith, which has experienced decline in Western countries.

Shihoko Goto, director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the Wilson Center, a Washington think-tank, said Pope Francis’ visit, despite his health concerns, “speaks volumes about the strategic importance of Asia for the Church.”

Papua New Guinea, with an official population of about 9 million, has some 2.5 million Catholics, the Vatican says. East Timor, with a population of 1.3 million, is nearly 96% Catholic, while Singapore counts about 210,000 Catholics among its 5.92 million people, according to the Vatican. — Reuters

TOKYO — Typhoon Shanshan lashed southwest Japan with heavy rain and very strong winds on Thursday, snarling air traffic and knocking out power to more than a quarter million households.

At least three people were killed. Major automakers including Toyota and Nissan suspended operations in some or all of their domestic factories due to the storm, while chipmaker Renesas decided to temporarily halt production at four factories.

The typhoon, with gusts of up to 50 meters per second (180 km per hour/112 mph), was near Unzen city in Nagasaki Prefecture at 1:45 p.m. (0445 GMT), moving north at about 15 km per hour, according to the weather agency. The storm earlier made landfall near Satsumasendai city located on the southwestern island of Kyushu.

Authorities warned the storm could be one of the strongest ever to hit the region, and local governments have issued evacuation orders for millions of residents in several prefectures.

Three people were dead, one was missing, two were severely injured, and five suffered minor injuries because of the typhoon, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said.

“As this typhoon is moving slowly, total amount of rain could be rather big,” Mr. Hayashi told a regular news conference.

Footage from public broadcaster NHK showed walls torn and window glass of buildings broken in Miyazaki city in southern Kyushu, with objects scattered on the street or hanging from utility poles.

Funeral parlor employee Tomoki Maeda was in a hearse when the typhoon struck in Miyazaki.

“I’ve never experienced such a strong wind or tornado in my 31 years of life,” Maeda told Reuters.

More than 250,000 households in seven prefectures were without power in the afternoon, according to Kyushu Electric Power Co. The utility earlier said there was no impact at its Sendai Nuclear Power Plant.

After hovering over Kyushu for the next few days, the storm is expected to approach the central and eastern regions, including the capital Tokyo, around the weekend, the weather agency said.

Airlines, including ANA Holdings and Japan Airlines, have already announced cancelations of more than 600 domestic flights. Train services have been suspended in many areas of Kyushu.

Typhoon Shanshan is the latest harsh weather system to hit Japan, following Typhoon Ampil, which also led to blackouts and evacuations, earlier this month. — Reuters

BELLINZONA, Switzerland — The Swiss Federal Criminal Court convicted on Wednesday two executives at an oil exploration company for embezzling more than $1.8 billion from Malaysia’s state investment fund 1MDB.

Swiss-British national Patrick Mahony and Swiss-Saudi Tarek Obaid were also ordered to pay back more than $1.75 billion to the fund, which was at the center of an international kleptocracy scandal.

The difference between the two amounts was interest payments the fraudsters paid back to 1MDB during the scam.

The verdict was the latest episode in the 1MDB affair, a complex tale of international corruption that has buffeted a slew of financial institutions and individuals across the globe since allegations of wrongdoing first surfaced in 2015.

Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Mahony and Mr. Obaid had helped to set up a joint venture with 1MDB by creating the impression that their company, PetroSaudi, was backed by the Saudi government.

This was not in fact the case, but the accused managed to persuade 1MDB’s board into signing up to the scheme in 2009 before going on to defraud the fund, prosecutors said

“The accused deceived the members of the 1MDB board of directors into believing that Petrosaudi had links with the Saudi Arabian government and that PetroSaudi would contribute significant oil assets to the joint venture,” the court said.

“These statements were false, and the accused knew this very well.”

According to the indictment, the two executives defrauded the wealth fund of $1.8 billion to enrich themselves, with Mr. Obaid getting at least $805 million and Mr. Mahony at least $37 million

They were both convicted of fraud, criminal mismanagement and money laundering by the court in the southern Swiss city of Bellinzona.

Mr. Obaid was sentenced to seven years in prison, while Mr. Mahony received a sentence of six years. The court said the sentences differed because Mr. Obaid had enriched himself more than Mr. Mahony.

“The court took into account the very high amounts involved, the intensity of the criminal activity, (and) the selfish motive,” it said.

The two men had denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Obaid’s lawyer said his client had immediately filed an appeal against the verdict.

“Mr. Obaid has always contested the commission of any offense,” said Daniel Zappelli. “The reasoning of the court has not taken into consideration very numerous factual and legal aspects that we had brought before it.”

Mr. Mahony’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors said the two men created the fraudulent scheme with fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low, an adviser to former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, who is already in prison over his role in the multi-billion dollar scandal.

Initially extracting $1 billion from 1MDB so it could buy a stake in their venture, the accused took a further $830 million from the fund between 2010 and 2011 as part of an Islamic loan that followed on from their tie-up, prosecutors said.

Between September 2009 and at least July 2015 the accused arranged for bank accounts to be opened in Switzerland to help launder the millions, prosecutors said.

They used the money to buy real estate in Switzerland and London, jewelry and private equity, as well as to develop the PetroSaudi business from which they received a sizeable income, and to maintain “a lavish lifestyle,” prosecutors said.

Malaysian and US investigators estimate a total of $4.5 billion was siphoned away from 1MDB following its inception in 2009, implicating figures including Razak, Goldman Sachs staff and high-level officials elsewhere.

1MDB, the former sovereign wealth fund which is currently trying to recover its stolen assets, welcomed the judgment.

“We welcome today’s verdict…. which means that Patrick Mahony and Tarek Obaid will face justice for their role in embezzling and defrauding the people of Malaysia,” a spokesperson said. — Reuters