Pope Francis heads to South Korea with message of peace

Pope Francis travels to South Korea this week with a message of peace for the divided peninsula on his first papal visit to Asia, where the Catholic Church is undergoing dramatic growth.

The 77-year-old will fly into Seoul on Wednesday in a trip also aimed at making up for his predecessor, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, who never visited Asia during his eight-year papacy.

Vatican watchers say the pope will address the whole continent on the seven-day trip where the number of Catholics, although only 3.2 per cent of the population, is rocketing.

With the Catholic Church dogged by increasing secularism in the West, "it's a chance for the pontiff to flash a thumbs-up to a region upon which Catholicism is increasingly reliant", said Vatican expert John Allen, who writes for the Boston Globe.

In January, the pope will visit Sri Lanka and the Philippines - the region's largest Catholic country - to nurture the burgeoning number of faithful and would-be clerics from China to India, Myanmar and Vietnam.

In South Korea he will preside over a beatification ceremony for 124 Korean martyrs and is expected to use his speech to warn of a recent escalation in anti-Christian persecution in some countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia.