Pope Francis Urges Church to be Creative in Spreading Faith in Asia Only About 3% of Asians Are Catholics, But Continent Represents Great Hope for Vatican

Pope Francis speaks during a meeting with Asian bishops in the Shrine of Haemi on Sunday. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

SEOUL—In the penultimate day of his five-day visit to South Korea, Pope Francis called on the church to be "creative" in its efforts to spread the faith in Asia, the continent that represents great hope for the Vatican's quest to grow the number of Catholics in the world.

The pontiff spoke at a meeting Sunday with the region's bishops—about 80 in all —at a shrine to Korean martyrs where scores of Catholics were executed in the mid-1800s. The pope's visit to South Korea is his first voyage to Asia during his 17-month papacy and comes against a mixed picture of the church's position in the continent.

Pope Francis beatified 124 Korean martyrs in a ceremony in the South Korean city of Eumseong on Saturday. The pontiff led the mass in front of a crowd of about 800,000. Photo: Getty Images

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"On this vast continent which is home to a great variety of cultures, the church is called to be versatile and creative in her witness to the gospel through dialogue and openness to all," he said. Christians in Asia are a "small flock which nonetheless is charged to bring the light of the gospel to the ends of the earth."

The pope said the church "earnestly hope(s)" to establish full relations with Asian countries with whom it does not now have diplomatic ties. The Vatican does not have relations with China orNorth Korea.

Catholicism has pockets of strength in Asia, such as Vietnam, South Korea and the Philippines—the country that was home to the third-biggest Catholic population in the world in 2010—but is struggling with hostility and even violence in countries such as Pakistan, India and Malaysia.

"The spread of the faith in Asia isn't as quick as we could hope for," said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary of State, in an interview last week with the Holy See's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. "The church is facing very varied situations, some that are easier and some that at more difficult."

Only about 3% of Asians are Catholics, and the church is encountering stiff competition both from traditional religions in the region and Protestant evangelical groups that have made rapid inroads on the continent. Nonetheless, Rome sees opportunity in a region where it believes that rapid economic advances have sometimes generated a thirst for faith.

"Asia is central for the future of the world and for the future of the church," said Mumbai Cardinal Oswald Gracias, head of the Asian Bishops' Conference and a member of Pope Francis' nine-person committee advising him on reforms to the Vatican and the church. "Globalization has impacted Asia and this has brought new challenges to the church. Asian people are religious by nature, yet a spirit of secularism and materialism is creeping in."

The pope also launched a salvo against the dangers of the high-tech revolution, warning against a "tendency to toy with the latest fads, gadgets and distractions, rather than attending to the things that really matter."

Pope Francis' meeting with the Asian bishops falls under the shadow of the Vatican's relations with China, a country that holds out great hopes for the Holy See but with whom Rome has a fraught history.

The pope's reference to his hope that the Holy See can re-establish ties with China represents one of the few statements by the pontiff so far over the relationship with the Asian giant. China allowed the pope's plane to fly over its territory on his way to Seoul last week—a first for a pontifical trip—which was interpreted by some as a very small diplomatic opening for the Holy See.

The Vatican hasn't had relations with China for more than 60 years, with the delicate issue of the nomination of Catholic bishops a central problem. China's government-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association claims the power to nominate bishops, while the Holy See regards it as an inalienable right.

Since his arrival in South Korea on Thursday, the pope has met a warm reception, holding a Mass before a raucous audience of about 50,000 at a soccer stadium on Friday and drawing a crowd of about 800,000 to a ceremony Saturday to beatify 124 Korean martyrs. The turnout was so high that it took about 1,000 priests and deacons to distribute communion.

In the afternoon, the pope will celebrate Mass at Haemi Castle, a popular pilgrimage site for the faithful, bringing to a close Asian Youth Day. The youth celebrations, which saw several thousand young people come from throughout Asia, were the main reason for the pope's visit to South Korea.

Early Sunday morning, the pope baptized the father of one of the victims of the Sewol ferry disaster, which killed more than 300 people, mostly school children, in April. A Vatican spokesman said that the man took the name Francis at the ceremony, which took place in the Vatican's embassy in Seoul.

On Monday, before leaving for Rome, the pope will celebrate a Mass for peace and reconciliation of the divided Korean peninsula at Seoul's Myeongdong Cathedral. The downtown cathedral, the tallest structure in the city at the turn of the 20th century, became a "sanctuary of democracy," sheltering pro-democracy dissidents and serving as nerve center for the protests that helped end the country's military dictatorship in 1987.

At a meeting with young people Friday, the pope offered an impromptu prayer for the two Koreas, urging both countries' peoples to put aside their differences.

"You are brothers who speak the same language," he told them. "Think of your brothers in the North. They speak the same language and when, in a family, the same language is spoken, there is a human hope."

Separately, the Vatican gave some detail of the mission of Cardinal Fernando Filoni, who is traveling to northern Iraq and Kurdistan to push for a resolution of the conflict there that has seen fighters from the group calling itself the Islamic State drive thousands from their homes and commit atrocities against religious minorities, including Christians.

The pope, who forcefully called on Muslim leaders last week to do their part in pushing for an end to the strife, sent Cardinal Filoni as his personal envoy, entrusting him with a "considerable" amount of money for humanitarian relief, said a Vatican spokesman Saturday.

—Jonathan Cheng contributed to this article.

Write to Deborah Ball at deborah.ball@wsj.com