Russian missiles struck a military academy in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday only minutes after air-raid alarms blared, killing more than 50 people, wounding many others and underscoring Moscow’s superior firepower in one of the war’s deadliest attacks. Ukraine’s president said a hospital also was hit.

Rescue workers in the eastern city of Poltava described scenes of dismembered bodies pulled from the rubble of the school, which Ukrainian news outlets identified as the Poltava Institute of Military Communications.

The entire area was littered with shattered glass, with nearby high-rises missing windows and doors. By some accounts more than 200 people suffered injuries, overwhelming hospitals.

Denys Kliap, the 26-year-old director of Free and Unbreakable, a volunteer emergency response team, was asleep when the first blast rocked him out of bed. “As soon as it happened, we went straight to the site,” Mr. Kliap said. “When we arrived, the only thing I remember was the pile of bodies scattered all over the territory of the institute.”

While he has seen many horrific scenes, the devastation after Tuesday’s strikes was shocking, he said. He recalled bodies being pulled from the rubble “without legs, others without arms, some even without heads.”

The strike was a demoralizing blow to Ukraine, coming as its troops have been retreating from relentless Russian advances along the war’s main front in the Donbas region.

“Russia is taking away our most valuable asset, our lives,” Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said of the missile strike.

The attack on Tuesday extended a wave of Russian assaults on cities across Ukraine that began a week ago and that have been among the largest since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strike had been carried out with ballistic missiles, which can travel at supersonic speed and reach a target anywhere in Ukraine in a matter of minutes.

Vladimir Rogov, a Kremlin-appointed occupation official in southern Ukraine, claimed in a post on the Telegram messaging app that the military school hit in the missile strike offers training in radar and electronic warfare.

Witnesses said the strikes, one after the other, had come shortly after the air raid sirens sounded. The Ukrainian Air Force said that the short time between the warning siren and the strikes demonstrated the speed of the missiles, which arrived “literally a matter of minutes” after launch.

Poltava is a little more than 100 miles from the Russian border.

Ukraine has pleaded since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 for more tools to defend its skies from Russian missiles, and on Tuesday Mr. Zelensky took to social media to issue a fresh request for more aid. “Ukraine needs air defense systems and missiles now, not sitting in storage,” he wrote.

The only proven defense against ballistic missiles, Patriot missile systems, were sent from the United States and Germany but did not arrive until the spring of 2023 and Ukraine says it needs more.

Mr. Zelensky has said he desperately needs at least seven Patriot batteries to fend off attacks across the country. Germany has sent three and, in July, President Biden announced the deployment of a second Patriot missile system from the United States. Other American allies also have Patriots: Romania has pledged one, and the Netherlands has given parts of the complex system. U.S. officials have said they hope European powers will send more.

It was unclear if Ukraine used any of those Patriot batteries to try to fend off Tuesday’s attack in Poltava.

A number of questions about the strikes, and the high death toll, remained unanswered on Tuesday.

Just after the missiles struck, there were reports in the Ukrainian media that cadets had been lined up outside the military school. Mr. Rogov also claimed the missiles had hit cadets gathered for an event.

But Dmytro Lazutkin, the spokesman for Ukraine’s defense ministry, denied on national television that the victims had been participating in a parade or ceremony, saying that classes were underway when the air raid sirens sounded.

Since the start of the war, Ukraine has banned large gatherings, including at sports stadiums and large concert venues. But large numbers of people still congregate in malls, schools and markets.

In recent weeks the pace of the war has accelerated in Ukraine, both in the air and on the ground.

Russian advances in the direction of the eastern city of Pokrovsk, a vital logistics hub, have prompted local authorities to urge civilians to evacuate and the Ukrainian military to send reinforcements.

The capture of Pokrovsk by Russian forces would be their biggest gain in the region since they seized Avdiivka in January and February after intense ground fighting and bombardment. It also would bring Russian forces one step closer to achieving a key goal for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: full control of the Donbas.

Mr. Putin was in Mongolia on Tuesday, some 3,000 miles from the front lines of the Ukraine war. He said nothing in public about Ukraine, according to Kremlin transcripts of his remarks.

Attempts by Ukraine to divert the focus of war have so far not borne fruit. The incursion into the Kursk region of Russia in early August by Ukrainian forces drew Russian reinforcements but not from the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky on Tuesday said the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk was going “according to plan.” He told NBC News in an interview Tuesday that Ukraine would hold onto Russian territory for an unspecified amount of time. “For now, we need it,” he said, adding that it was part of a “victory plan.”

The Ukrainian military has also for months been targeting Russian oil and gas facilities with drone attacks. But the campaign has not yet had a demonstrable effect on the fighting in the Donbas.

Ukraine had hoped that the long-awaited arrival of Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets would assist in repelling Russian attacks. That effort suffered a blow last week when one of the warplanes crashed while defending against an intense Russian aerial attack, in what may have been a friendly-fire incident.

Reporting was contributed by Cassandra Vinograd, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Liubov Sholudko, Anton Troianovski, Andrew E. Kramer and Thomas Fuller.

A nationwide blackout. A broken economy. A widely contested presidential election. A populace terrified of its autocratic leader and his increasingly violent security forces.

What’s a president to do?

Declare the early arrival of Christmas, of course.

Facing widespread domestic and international criticism over his claim that he won a July presidential vote, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is trying to turn the nation’s attention toward the one thing almost every Venezuelan loves: Christmas.

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At least 129 people died during an attempted jailbreak at the largest prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s authorities said on Tuesday. It was the latest upheaval to hit an overcrowded detention facility notorious for conditions that human rights groups have long decried as inhumane.

Inmates said they had been held in stifling cells without water and electricity, and some had initially broken out to escape the heat.

A stampede was to blame for most of the deaths, but at least 24 inmates were killed by gunfire as they tried to escape from the Makala Central Prison early on Monday, according to Congo’s interior minister, Jacquemain Shabani.

He said on the platform X that 59 people had been injured and that there had been “some cases of women raped,” without providing further details. As of late Tuesday, it was unclear if any inmates had escaped.

Makala is the only prison in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and one of Africa’s most populous cities. Its intended capacity is 1,500 people but it holds at least 15,000, Congo’s deputy minister for justice, Samuel Mbemba, said in an interview.

The violence occurred as President Felix Tshisekedi of Congo was in Beijing for a forum on China-Africa cooperation, and adds to the challenges facing the Central African country. Home to more than 100 million people, Congo is battling multiple crises, including a deadly mpox outbreak and a conflict in its eastern region that has killed more than six million people and displaced millions of others over the past three decades.

With outdoor temperatures near 90 degrees, the inmates had been without running water or electricity to power fans for more than a day and a half, according to four inmates who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their safety inside the prison.

Many felt that they were suffocating, one said, and on Sunday evening some broke the doors of their cells to get out.

A Congolese intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the events publicly, said guards opened fire in the early hours of Monday morning when inmates tried to escape from the precinct of the prison.

Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala, a well-known Congolese journalist who served time at Makala last year but has since been released, shared a video showing a chaotic scene, with inmates running outside as shots rang out around them. In another video he shared that was filmed at night, several inmates are standing around what appears to be a corpse within the prison grounds.

Several videos verified by The New York Times as being filmed inside the prison complex showed the aftermath of the attempted jailbreak.

In one very graphic video, a large crowd stands around at least 25 lifeless bodies lined up in a central alleyway between prison blocks. Bodies were loaded onto a truck and driven from the grounds in another video filmed by the eastern perimeter of the prison complex, while a third video showed thick black smoke billowing from a building near the prison’s entrance.

Mr. Shabani, the interior minister, said that the inmates who died from bullet wounds had been shot “after warning.” The spokesman for Congo’s government, Patrick Muyaya, was traveling with Mr. Tshisekedi in Beijing and did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Tuesday. It was unclear what had happened to the prison’s water and power.

Human rights groups have long denounced horrifying detention conditions at the Makala prison, a facility built in 1957, before Congo became independent from Belgium, and which has had few renovations since. Its population ranges from those convicted of petty crimes to high-profile and political prisoners.

Last year, more than 500 inmates died from suffocation and various diseases, according to Emmanuel Adu Cole, a human rights advocate based in Kinshasa. He and one inmate said that as of Tuesday, there was still no running water and nothing to eat, as a food depot had burned.

Undated videos shared earlier this summer by Mr. Bujakera, the Congolese journalist, show haggard inmates crammed in detention rooms and restrooms, unable to sit or properly lie down.

At least 12 people, including what appeared to be six minors, died after a flimsy, overcrowded boat suddenly capsized off the coast of northern France on Tuesday during an attempt to cross the English Channel, the French authorities said.

It was the deadliest episode in the waterway this year as the French and British governments struggle to prevent migrants from attempting the perilous crossing.

Crammed by smugglers onto a boat that was less than 25 feet long, more than 60 people fell into the water after their “extremely fragile” vessel started sinking, according to Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister. Almost none of them had life vests, he said.

“This is a tragedy that affects us all,” Mr. Darmanin told reporters at a news conference in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a city in the coastal Pas-de-Calais area, which is where the sinking occurred and which at some points is less than 30 miles from the British coastline.

The vessel sank about three miles off the coast, French authorities said. Twelve people were hospitalized, two of them in critical condition, they added.

Jacques Billant, the Pas-de-Calais prefect, told reporters that the boat “rapidly and brutally” broke apart shortly after 11 a.m. as it headed toward Britain.

Guirec Le Bras, the prosecutor in Boulogne-sur-Mer, told reporters it was not immediately clear what had caused the boat to sink or how the victims had died. But he said his office had opened an investigation into a range of potential criminal charges, including involuntary manslaughter. Investigators had not yet determined the exact nationalities and ages of the people on board, he said, but most of them appeared to be from Eritrea and it seemed that most of the victims were women or children.

The French maritime authorities said in a statement that rescue operations involving helicopters, fishing boats and French Navy ships were quickly set in motion and that rescue workers picked up 65 people out of the water.

One of the worst migrant-related accidents in the Channel happened in 2021, when 27 people died after their boat capsized, but deadly tragedies have repeatedly occurred on a smaller scale.

Many of the most recent incidents have unfolded near Boulogne-sur-Mer, an area that has become more attractive for smuggling networks after French authorities tightened patrols and security farther north on the coastline, Mr. Darmanin said.

Nearly 36,000 people trying to reach Britain were the subject of search-and-rescue operations in the English Channel in 2023, according to a report by the French maritime authorities, down from over 51,000 in 2022.

But the average number of people per boat grew to 50 from 30 — making a perilous crossing even more so, according to the report. Last year, 12 people attempting the crossing died in France’s search-and-rescue zone, the report said.

The Channel is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Its waters are especially icy in the winter, winds can be treacherous, and migrants trying to cross often crowd onto flimsy inflatable boats.

Both France and Britain blame human smuggling networks for putting the lives of migrants at risk.

“The gangs behind this appalling and callous trade in human lives have been cramming more and more people onto increasingly unseaworthy dinghies, and sending them out into the Channel even in very poor weather,” Yvette Cooper, Britain’s home secretary, whose office oversees immigration into the country, said on Tuesday. “They do not care about anything but the profits they make.”

The British and French authorities agreed last year that Britain would pay France 541 million pounds, currently more than $700 million, over three years to help pay for drones, a new detention center and hundreds of additional police officers to patrol beaches in northern France — one of several deals that the two countries have struck over the past few years to try to reduce the number of crossings.

But the Channel crossings have become a recurring sticking point in relations between the two countries, and on Tuesday, Mr. Darmanin said that only a new “migration treaty” to harmonize asylum and deportation rules between Britain and the European Union would provide a lasting solution.

Less than 5 percent of migrants from Africa or the Middle East who cluster in makeshift camps on the coast end up requesting asylum in France, he said.

Many prefer risking the trip across the Channel over staying in France because they see Britain as an attractive destination with a strong job market where English is spoken, or because they already have family there or people they know from their home country.

“Nothing can resist that desire to continue to live with your family, to find a job, and live correctly,” Mr. Darmanin said.

At least 19,294 people have arrived in England across the Channel on small boats since the start of 2024, according to British government data, comparable to the number of arrivals in the first eight months of the previous year.

The arrival of the small boats across the Channel has become a major point of political tension in Britain after the former Conservative government vowed to “stop the boats” and introduced a contentious plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda in an attempt to dissuade migrants from attempting the crossing.

The Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain announced after a landslide victory in July that it would scrap those plans. Since then, though, the issue of immigration has taken center stage, with far-right riots rattling cities across Britain this summer.

Though the number of boat arrivals has risen significantly since 2018, they make up just a fraction of immigration into Britain overall, and the majority of people making this crossing are asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution.

Some 93 percent of the people who arrived in small boats between 2018 and March 2024 claimed asylum, and of those who had received a decision by March 31, around three-quarters were successful, according to the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.

Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, a British charity that supports asylum seekers and refugees, said in a statement on Tuesday that “the number of deaths in the Channel this year has been shockingly high.”

But “enforcement alone is not the solution,” Mr. Solomon said. “Heightened security and policing measures on the French coast have led to increasingly perilous crossings, launching from more dangerous locations and in flimsy, overcrowded vessels.”

He added that the British government needed to take action against the criminal gangs that are often responsible for smuggling people across the Channel, but that it also “must develop a plan to improve and expand safe routes for those seeking safety.”

The authorities in South Korea are investigating a surge of sexually explicit images and video clips that have spread online and shocked the nation, leading the police to detain seven male suspects — six of them teenagers — the police said on Tuesday.

The South Korean authorities began investigating the images and videos late last month after local media reported the spread of the content, which was created using deepfake apps. Young men were said to be stealing social media images from female classmates, teachers and neighbors, and then using them to create the sexually explicit material before circulating them in chat rooms on the messaging app Telegram.

The crimes triggered a panic among many women in South Korea, and President Yoon Suk Yeol last week called on his government to root out digital sex abuse.

“Many of the victims are minors and most of the perpetrators are teenagers,” Mr. Yoon said last Tuesday during a cabinet meeting. “They may say that they created this as a ‘mere prank,’ but this is a clear criminal act that exploited technology behind the wall of anonymity.”

The investigation in South Korea followed the arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram’s Russian-born founder, by the French authorities last month. The authorities in France were investigating child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraud on the encrypted messaging app. Mr. Durov was later charged with a range of crimes, including complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material.

The steep rise in deepfakes in South Korea made headlines in the country after reporters found Telegram channels on which female university, high and middle school students were among the victims.

“Telegram has been actively removing content reported from Korea that breached its terms of service and will continue to do so,” the company said in a statement.

Last week, 118 cases of suspected deepfake sexual crimes were reported, resulting in the detention of the seven male suspects, the police said Tuesday. The police have not yet charged any of those who have been detained.

Under South Korean law, people convicted of making sexually explicit deepfakes with the intention to distribute them face punishments of ​up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 50 million won, or $37,000. Women’s rights groups have called for new legislation ​to punish those who possess and watch such materials.

Most of the people involved in the production and spread of the imagery — as well as many of the victims — are in their teens, according to data compiled by the Korean National Police Agency. Of the 178 people identified by the agency as criminal suspects in the first seven months of the year, 131 were teenagers, the police said.

The number of suspects was expected to increase as more people reported cases of deepfake sexual violence.

South Korea has struggled with digital sex crimes in recent years. In 2020, Cho Joo-bin, the mastermind of a digital sex crime ring, was sentenced to 40 years in prison on charges of luring young women, including teenagers, into making videos that he sold online through encrypted chat rooms on Telegram.

This year, South Korea has reported a surge in online deepfake sex crimes. Between January and July, 297 cases were reported, almost three times the number reported in the same period last year, according to the police.

Uganda’s top opposition figure, Bobi Wine, was shot in the leg by the police on Tuesday, his political party said, calling it an escalation of a government campaign of intimidation against a prominent critic who challenged the country’s autocratic leader in a run for the presidency in 2021.

It was not immediately clear whether a bullet or a tear-gas canister was the projectile that had hit Mr. Wine’s leg, Mr. Wine’s international lawyer, Bruce Afran, said in a phone interview. Mr. Afran said that Mr. Wine’s wound does not appear to be life-threatening and that he was receiving treatment at a hospital in the capital, Kampala.

Mr. Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, rose to prominence in recent years to become the leading challenger to the government of President Yoweri Museveni, a key Western ally who has won six terms in office in elections often marred by allegations of fraud and rigging.

Mr. Wine, 42, a musician-turned-lawmaker and the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, “The People’s President,” challenged Mr. Museveni, 79, for the presidency in the most recent national elections, three years ago. During the campaign, Mr. Wine was repeatedly beaten and detained, and security forces surrounded his house as the results trickled in.

His party, the National Unity Platform, which holds more seats than any other opposition party in the National Assembly, said in a post on X that Mr. Wine had been shot in the leg on Tuesday as he returned from visiting one of his party’s lawyers in the town of Bulindo, northeast of the capital. Mr. Wine and his entourage were surrounded by military and police officers who began firing live bullets and tear-gas canisters, the party said.

Videos and photos shared on social media show Mr. Wine writhing in pain and bleeding from a wound just below the left knee.

Uganda’s police force said in a statement that the police had warned Mr. Wine against starting a street procession as he left Bulindo. But he and his team, the police said, “insisted on proceeding and closing the road, leading to police intervention to prevent the procession.”

The police statement said that officers on the scene said that Mr. Wine was injured when he “stumbled while getting into his vehicle” during the confrontation. The police said that they will investigate the incident.

The shooting of Mr. Wine caps a long campaign of government harassment and intimidation of both Mr. Wine and other political opposition and civil society groups in Uganda.

Protesters have marched in the streets against corruption in recent months and have demanded the resignation of the speaker of the Parliament, who has been accused of graft and been sanctioned by both Britain and the United States.

Even after Mr. Museveni won the last election, the Ugandan authorities continued to pursue Mr. Wine’s supporters, abducting them in unmarked white minivans, and torturing them, according to activists and opposition party members.

Mr. Wine and others have accused Mr. Museveni, his son and other top government officials of committing crimes against humanity and have filed a case against them in the International Criminal Court.

Last year, Mr. Wine was seized at the Entebbe International Airport, Uganda’s main airport, and put under house arrest after he returned home from holding political rallies abroad and attending screenings of the documentary focusing on his life.

On Tuesday, Mr. Afran said that in light of Tuesday’s shooting, the United States should review its financial and military support of the government of Mr. Museveni.

Starlink, the satellite-internet service controlled by Elon Musk, reversed course on Tuesday and said it would comply with Brazilian government orders to block Mr. Musk’s social network X in the country.

The move was the first sign of any backing down by Mr. Musk in Brazil since he began battling with the authorities there last month. X has been blacked out across the nation of 200 million since Saturday because of a dispute between Mr. Musk and Brazil’s Supreme Court over what can be said online.

Starlink escalated the fight on Sunday when, according to Brazilian regulators, the company declared it would continue allowing its 250,000 customers in Brazil to log on to X, defying the government.

Carlos Baigorri, president of Brazil’s telecommunication agency, said on Sunday that if Starlink refused to comply, his agency could revoke its license to operate in the country and could seize 23 ground stations it uses to improve the quality of its connections.

Mr. Baigorri said that Starlink had told him earlier that it would not comply until Brazil’s Supreme Court lifted financial sanctions against it in the country.

Alexandre de Moraes, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice who has led the action against X, froze Starlink’s assets and blocked it from completing financial transactions in Brazil in a bid to collect more than $3 million in fines he has imposed against X.

In a post on X on Tuesday afternoon, Starlink said that “regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil.” The company added that it would “continue to pursue all legal avenues.”

Brazil’s Supreme Court has already dismissed a request from Starlink to lift the sanctions. Unable to make financial transactions in Brazil, Starlink said it would offer free internet service to Brazilian customers for now.

Justice Moraes blocked X in Brazil because Mr. Musk has refused to comply with court orders to remove certain accounts on the social network, and then closed X’s office in the country. Mr. Musk has criticized Justice Moraes for months, accusing him of illegally censoring free speech. The justice has said Mr. Musk is obstructing his work of removing hate speech and attacks on democracy from the Brazilian internet.

X has begun publishing some of the sealed orders that Justice Moraes has issued to the company to suspend accounts. Those orders do not explain why a given account should be suspended.

On Monday, a panel of Brazilian Supreme Court justices upheld the order to block X in the country.

The hallelujahs rang out on Sunday from a small hall on the outskirts of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. The sounds from the Christian service could be heard within the green and orange mosque across the way, as a group of young girls in hijabs walked by.

On the surface, the scene was a reflection of the interfaith harmony that Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, is proud of. But the Christians were not in their own church. Earlier this year, their congregation’s building was stormed by dozens of angry Muslims, and now they were temporarily gathering in a government-owned building in a different area.

This is the complex reality awaiting Pope Francis as he begins a four-day trip to Indonesia on Tuesday, which will include an interfaith dialogue at the national mosque. There are many vibrant examples of how Christianity and Islam coexist in Indonesia — a dynamic that Francis wants to encourage — but at the same time, religious minorities face discrimination.

By and large, Indonesian Muslims practice a moderate brand of Sunni Islam that is tolerant of other faiths. But other branches of Islam, notably the Shias and Ahmadiyyas, have long felt marginalized. And conservative strains of Islam have spread here in recent years, with one province, Aceh, having enforced Shariah law for nearly a decade.

In dozens of cities, young girls are pressured, bullied, and harassed to wear hijabs at schools and public spaces, Human Rights Watch has documented.

With the rise of conservative Islam, some believers in minority faiths say, the space for religious freedom in Indonesia has shrunk.

The Christians who met on Sunday in Tangerang, the city on the outskirts of Jakarta, had been attacked in their building in March as children prepared costumes for an Easter show. They were told that they could not have a church in a Muslim area, members of the community said.

Last year, there were 329 acts of violence against religious minorities, nearly one per day, according to the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, a human rights watchdog. There has been deadly violence in the past, including bombings at churches.

The Indonesian government officially recognizes six faiths: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. It has adopted some measures to protect religious freedom, like forbidding schools to make hijabs compulsory. But some minorities say those protections aren’t honored in practice and that parts of Indonesian law effectively discriminate against them.

The biggest issue has been the building of houses of worship. To do so, religious groups have to get the signatures of 60 people from other faiths in the community, as well as approval from the local interfaith council, which is made up of religious leaders but almost always dominated by Muslims. This, critics say, effectively gives Muslims veto power.

Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo, the archbishop of Jakarta, downplayed the issue of church construction being blocked, saying that such incidents largely came down to vote baiting by Muslim politicians. The bigger challenges facing the Catholic Church in Indonesia, he said, are ones that face the nation as a whole: corruption, threats to democracy and income inequality.

Still, the Christian community in Tangerang has not been able to get even half of the 60 signatures for their church, members said.

“We have been independent for 79 years, but for me it is a half-independence,” said Oktaviyanto M.I. Pardede, 59, a leader of the congregation. “Why am I still being colonized by my own people, why can’t I practice my religion freely?”

The Vatican was one of the first states to recognize Indonesia’s independence after it became free of Dutch rule in 1947, and the two have maintained close ties ever since.

Yet when Pope John Paul II visited in 1989, he was met with protests because of his faith. Two decades later, when President Barack Obama visited the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, the national mosque, many Muslims asked why a practicing Christian was being allowed into their house of worship.

But the reaction to Francis’s trip — part of his outreach to what he calls “the peripheries” of Catholicism — has been different.

“I think it’s a very important visit,” said Nurlaila, a Muslim woman who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name, and who had just finished praying at the Istiqlal Mosque.

Much of the credit for changing attitudes has gone to the Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim social organization in the world, with some 150 million members. Its leader, Yahya Cholil Staquf, said the group had protected churches from extremist groups and lobbied local officials to let them be built.

Three percent of Indonesia’s 280 million people are Catholics, but they have a substantial presence in some parts of the country, like the eastern island of Flores, where theirs is the dominant faith. Nationwide, Protestants account for 10 percent of the population.

Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam of the Istiqlal Mosque, said Catholics had offered to donate animals to the mosque to be sacrificed during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.

The grand imam pushed for the construction of a “tunnel of friendship” to connect the Istiqlal Mosque and the nearby Jakarta Cathedral. On Thursday, Francis will visit the Istiqlal for an interfaith dialogue, and mosque officials hope he will see the tunnel.

Such blending of religions is not unusual in Indonesia.

On a recent Friday night, Diah Purwanti, 47, laid out her prayer mat in the presence of a picture of Jesus. Raised a Catholic, she had converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim man. Her parents were Muslims who had converted to Catholicism, and one of her brothers is studying to be a Jesuit priest. As children, they celebrated both Eid and Christmas.

But some worshipers see a contradiction between their own experience and Indonesia’s image as a multicultural, tolerant place.

“Unity is the foundation of the country,” said Manav Hardinata, 23, whose Lutheran community has not been allowed to build a house of worship. “But here it is a competition, they treat us as if we want to take their people.”

Though they were Lutherans, not Catholics, many of the worshipers in Tangerang were hopeful and excited about the pope’s visit.

“We are hoping that it will bring changes to this issue,” said Robert Sinaga, 62. “His message is a message of community.”

On Sunday evening in Bekasi, another suburb of Jakarta, the Muslim call to prayer could be heard from the Catholic church Santa Clara, as a priest prepared for communion.

After a 17-year wait, Santa Clara received a permit to begin building in 2015, said Rasnius Pasaribu, the coordinator of the church’s construction committee. But thousands of Muslims protested the project at the local city hall. So Mr. Pasaribu’s committee agreed to make changes to the church’s design.

From the highway, Santa Clara, a sprawling white complex with a congregation of 10,000, does not look like a church. It cannot display a cross or a bell there. Instead, its facade, and its statue of the Madonna, enclosed in a cave of rose petals, lie toward the back of the compound.

Still, Mr. Pasaribu said: “We are happy. It’s amazing that we can pray in a church.”

Muktita Suhartono, Rin Hindryati and Hasya Nindita contributed reporting.