The short range rockets were fired from multiple launchers from North Korea and travelled 220 km, before landing in waters east of the Korean peninsula on August 14.

The last rocket was fired 35 minutes before Pope Francis was due to arrive at an air base in Seoul, where the Pontiff started a five-day visit to the south.

The test site was hundreds of kilometres (miles) away from the Pope's plane.

North Korea fired two more projectiles from the same location later the same day.

"Our scientists do not know what the Pope has done for the people of the world, and especially for our nation, and we don't feel any necessity to know about it. And we don't know and are not interested in the purpose of his visit to Korea," a North Korean spokesman said on state media.

The launches preceded the start of US-South Korean military exercises set for August 18.

Seoul and Washington say the exercises are defensive in nature, but North Korea regularly protests against what it sees as a rehearsal for war.

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In January, Francis will return to visit Sri Lanka and the Philippines, and a trip to Japan — where the pope wanted to go as a young priest — is reportedly under consideration.

"I must go to Asia," the pope said a year ago as he returned from a visit to Brazil, adding that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, never traveled there during his eight-year pontificate.

Now Francis will get his chance, and Asians will have their first opportunity to see their new pope up close.

But more than evangelizing missions or personal pilgrimages, the Asian trips also highlight Francis' push to globalize and reform a Catholic Church that is still very much centered on what happens in Rome, and anchored in a European mindset that is accustomed to the privileges of a majority status and often preoccupied with matters of doctrine and ecclesiastical politics.

Asian Catholicism, by contrast, is younger, less rooted in the surrounding culture and less interested in looking to the Vatican for answers to every question.

While 130 million Asian Catholics represent only 11 percent of all Catholics worldwide, the church in Asia is growing faster than any place else except Africa, and almost half the population of Asia is under 25.

In fact, Francis is going to South Korea to take part in Asian Youth Day, a Catholic jamboree that will draw young people from 29 Asian countries.

Asian churches also benefit by being so distant from the Vatican, and from the internecine concerns of the Roman Curia.

For example, bishops in Asia are often freer to tell Rome when they disagree with certain policies or decisions and they have a better chance of Rome letting them do their own thing — a dynamic of decentralization that Francis says he wants to encourage. Continue reading

Sources

• Huffington Post
• Image: South China Morning Post