Pope Francis departed from Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, for Timor Leste this Monday morning, Sept. 9, and received an official welcome from the country’s president and the prime minister when he arrived at Dili’s Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport as the sun blazed down on those waiting to welcome him. It was hot, but Francis was smiling.
He is the second pope to come to the most Catholic country in Asia, after St. John Paul II who visited in 1989, when the country was still under Indonesian occupation.
Francis is the first pope to visit Timor Leste since the country won independence in 2002. Since his visit was announced last February, there has been tremendous excitement throughout the country. “Both the government and the people are organizing a huge welcome,” Erik John Gerilla, S.J., the superior of the Jesuits in the Timor-Leste region, said in a comment on the website of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific in advance of the visit, and he was right.
The Timorese people gave Pope Francis a tremendous welcome. Tens of thousands of people, very many of them young people, as well as mothers with children, lined the roads from the airport to the nunciature where the pope will reside for the duration of his visit. The government declared a three-day holiday for the duration of his stay.
People lined the streets again that evening when Francis was driven from the nunciature to the presidential palace where President José Manuel Ramos-Horta honored him with an official welcome that included an honor guard and a 21-gun salute. After a private conversation with the president, the pope addressed an audience of 400 persons from the state authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, Francis will begin his program with a visit to children with disabilities at the Irmas Alma School. After that he will meet with the bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, seminarians and catechists at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where he will be welcomed by Cardinal Virgílio do Carmo da Silva, S.D.B., 56, to whom he gave the red hat in 2022, making him the country’s first cardinal.
That evening, Pope Francis will have a private question-and-answer session with the country’s 25 Jesuits at the nunciature and preside at Mass at the Tasitolu Esplanade on the coast, eight miles west of the capital city.
On the morning of his last day here, Wednesday, Sept. 11, Pope Francis will meet and address young people—the average age of the population here is 20 years old—at the Dili Convention Center.
Afterward, he will drive to the airport for a farewell ceremony before going to Singapore.
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Portuguese rule
Timor Leste, or East Timor, is a Southeast Asian nation that occupies half of the island of Timor and is almost the size of Connecticut. The western half of the island of Timor is governed by Indonesia.
From around the 13th century, the island in the Indonesian archipelago exported sandalwood, one of the world’s most expensive woods, valued for crafting and as a source of perfume. Sandalwood attracted European explorers to the island in the early 16th century when East Timor came under Portuguese influence. East Timor, as it was called then, remained a Portuguese colony from 1586 until 1975.
During World War II, Dili was occupied first by the Allies in 1941 and then by Japan in 1942. Portugal returned to administer it as part of its colonial empire after the war. After the “carnation revolution” in 1974, Portugal effectively abandoned East Timor, giving heart to the island’s independence movement. East Timor had become one of the poorest countries in the world, with a 50 percent infant mortality rate.
In July 1975, the first elections were held in East Timor, and the liberation movement for independence, the Frente Revolucionario de Timor Leste Independente, won with 55 percent of the vote. In August, civil war broke out, and the Portuguese governor left the country, ending 400 years of colonial rule.
In his book, The Churches in Asia, historian Georg Evers notes that “[d]uring the almost 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule (1596-1975), the Catholic church proved to be a reliable partner of the colonial rulers and in return enjoyed many privileges, including stipends, tax exemption, building of churches, schools, hospitals, plus travel expenses for the missionaries.”
Although Portugal entrusted the task of educating the Indigenous people to the Catholic Church in a 1940 concordat, Mr. Evers reports that by 1975 “the results were only modest.” The illiteracy rate stood at 95 percent, there were “few indigenous vocations.”
Indonesian invasion
Yet, as Mr. Evers reports, “the Catholic church played a decisive role in the process of decolonization and in defending human rights” after the Indonesian invasion in 1975 following the Portuguese departure and nine days after the declaration of independence on Nov. 28, 1975. The Catholic Church “lost its privileged position but gained in credibility among the people and was able to provide much needed aid to the poverty stricken population,” he writes.
Seeking to consolidate its occupation, Indonesia introduced in East Timor the regulation, valid everywhere in Indonesia under the Suharto regime, that all Timorese should belong to one of the country’s six officially recognized religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Protestantism, Catholicism or Confucianism). Most Timorese who were then followers of traditional religion opted to join the Catholic Church, Mr. Evers reports, and so the number of Catholics grew from 30 percent of the population at the beginning of Indonesian rule in 1975 to 85 percent at the beginning of 2001.
As the struggle for independence continued, the church played an increasingly important role. In 1983, Pope John Paul II appointed Carlos Ximenes Belo, a young Salesian priest, as bishop of Dili. Bishop Belo soon emerged as a forceful defender of human rights and was given “guest status” within the Indonesian bishops’ conference. (The Indonesian church at the time was very cautious, and made no public statements in defense of human rights of the Timorese, for fear of being considered disloyal to their country.)
The Vatican never recognized Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor and kept the Diocese of Dili under direct apostolic administration. John Paul II’s visit to East Timor in October 1989 was a delicate affair. The Timorese had hoped he would condemn Indonesia’s human rights violations and support their quest for independence, but he avoided doing so and urged them to forgive their oppressors at the Mass attended by 200,000, under heavy Indonesian military presence.
East Timorese resistance continued throughout the Indonesian rule (1975-99) that was marked by violence and brutality. Around 200,000 were killed in those years, about one-third of the population.
But the killing by the Indonesian military of some 200 demonstrators and injuring of thousands more at the Santa Cruz cemetery (known as the “Dili cemetery massacre”) on Nov. 12, 1991, proved to be “a turning point,” according to Mr. Evers. Bishop Belo visited the wounded and prevented the escalation of violence.
Bishop Belo subsequently took part in unofficial talks in Austria between exiled Timorese politicians and the Indonesian government. Then, in October 1996, Bishop Belo and current Timorese president José Ramos-Horta, then acting “foreign minister” for the umbrella organization of the resistance, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, giving international visibility to the cause for independence in East Timor.
That same year, 1996, the Vatican established a second diocese in East Timor called Bacau.
On May 21, 1998, Indonesia’s President Suharto resigned, and the new president, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie held a referendum on independence in East Timor. The United Nations supervised the referendum in August 1999, which resulted in a 78 percent vote in favor of independence. Pro-Indonesian militias in East Timor, supported by elements of the military, reacted violently to the result of the referendum and “displaced hundreds of thousands of people,” almost half the population, from their homes, Mr. Evers writes. They burned churches and killed “many people.”
José Magadia, S.J., the Filipino general counselor for Asia Pacific at the Jesuit Curia in Rome, told America that among those killed in 1999 were “two Jesuit priests, Tarcisius Dewanto, an Indonesian, and Karl Albrecht, a German…. We consider them martyrs.”
In response, the Indonesian government allowed a multinational peacekeeping force to restore order and distribute aid to refugees and displaced persons. On Oct. 20, 1999, the Indonesian parliament recognized the result of the referendum. The United Nations established a transitional administration in East Timor. On Feb. 29, 2000, President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia visited Dili, admitted the guilt of the Indonesian military during the 25 years of occupation and laid a wreath at the monument to the massacre. Mr. Evers said Bishop Belo and Bishop Basílio do Nascimento of Bacau considered the gesture “a step to a friendly relationship between Indonesia and the new state.” The new constitution was approved in March 2002.
Abuse scandal
On May 20, 2002, Timor Leste formally gained its independence after 400 years of Portuguese rule and 25 years of Indonesian occupation, becoming the first new sovereign state of the 21st century. That same day, the Holy See and Timor Leste established full diplomatic relations.
The Vatican had planned to erect a third diocese in the country in 2002, but that was put on hold when Bishop Belo, hailed as a hero in the country, suddenly resigned on Nov. 26, 2002, “for health reasons” and went to Portugal. He later went to do pastoral work in Mozambique. On March 6, 2004, Pope John Paul made Alberto Ricardo da Silva the new bishop of Dili.
It is now known that Bishop Belo, a close friend of the resistance leaders and of the current president, José Ramos-Horta, had to resign because of accusations that he abused minors in the 1990s. The story was broken by De Groene Amsterdammer, an independent Dutch weekly news magazine, in September 2022, which said that he was first charged with the abuse in 2002.
On Sept. 29, 2022, the director of the Vatican Press Office, Matteo Bruni, stated:
The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith was first involved in this case in 2019. In the light of the accusations it received concerning the bishop’s behavior, in September 2020 the Congregation imposed certain disciplinary restrictions upon him. These included limitations to his movements and to the exercise of his ministry, the prohibition of voluntary contact with minors, of interviews and contacts with Timor Leste.
Mr. Bruni added that “[i]n November 2021 these measures were modified and reinforced. On both occasions, the measures were formally accepted by the bishop.” Bishop Belo cannot return to Timor Leste because of these restrictions.
The story resurfaced in the international media on the eve of the pope’s visit to the country, and many are asking if Pope Francis will address the issue during his visit or if he will meet some of the victims of the bishop.
In the years after Bishop Belo’s departure, the political situation in the country did not remain tranquil or stable. Unrest and factional fighting erupted in 2006, forcing 155,000 people to flee their homes; the United Nations sent in forces to restore order. In 2007, Mr. Ramos-Horta was elected president. In February 2008 there was an assassination attempt on his life and that of the prime minister, Xanana Gusmao, but both survived.
Present day
This country of 1.5 million people, the majority of them young, remains relatively poor. There is very high unemployment, especially in the urban areas and among young people. The economy relies heavily on natural resources, especially oil and offshore gas (still not fully exploited) and foreign aid.
Father José Magadia told America he attributes some of the problems to the fact that “at the political level, the heroes of the independence are still governing the country, there is no new leadership,” and “at the church level there is not much initiative in the social field in spite of the poverty, lack of education and still a large rural population.” But, he added, there is also a “lack of resources.”
On the eve of the papal visit, Erik John Gerilla, S.J., superior of the Timor Leste region, said he hopes Pope Francis “will encourage our leaders to combat tirelessly poverty and injustice, which affect the majority of our population.” He also hopes that Francis “will not be silent on the issue of clericalism and of the need to strengthen our conviction to being a church for the poor, and invite our leaders and elders to constantly work toward the evangelization of local cultures” because “syncretism is being largely tolerated.”
Some 96 percent of Timor Leste’s population is Catholic. Keenly aware of the importance of educating the young, the Catholic Church runs 42,000 kindergarten and primary schools, 40,000 secondary schools, and 1,445 institutes of higher education.
There are also followers of other religions in Timor Leste, a country that is committed to religious pluralism; there is a mosque in Dili, and a Hindu temple is under construction. Furthermore, in 2022 East Timor adopted the Document on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis and Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al Azhar, in Abu Dhabi in 2019.
Timor Leste is the 64th country in the world that Francis has visited since he became pope, and after his historic visit here he will board the plane for a four-hour flight to Singapore, the last leg of his long journey to the East.
