What kind of collaboration arose between the Holy See and the Singaporean government?
The first collaboration was the organization of the historic visit of Pope John Paul II. Now we celebrate the 20th anniversary of that visit. It was in 1986 that John Paul came, on Nov. 20. And the collaboration for this visit was a great achievement between both the government of Singapore and the Holy See. Since then many visits have been performed — government officials to the Vatican and Holy See officials to Singapore. And also cultural collaboration — for example, an exhibition of Vatican arts — and also a collaboration on scholarships for students from Asian countries. We are open to many other collaborations. Singapore achieved independence more than 40 years ago. Why were relations with the Holy See established only 25 years ago? A young country takes a little bit of time to be established in the “concert of nations.” Of course its immediate concern was to establish relations with neighboring countries. But I must say that the government always saw favorably the presence of
