DILI, East Timor (news agencies) — When Pope Francis makes his trip to Asia’s newest country, East Timor, it will make him the second pope to visit after John Paul in 1989, and the first since the country gained independence from Indonesia in 2002.
It also comes only two years after the Vatican acknowledged that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, and three years after a popular American missionary was convicted of molesting young girls.
The two clergymen still enjoy widespread support among the overwhelming Catholic people of East Timor, for their staunch support of the country during its bloody struggle for independence.
An media visit to the capital, Dili, ahead of Francis’ visit, which starts Sept. 9, found that most people downplay, doubt, or dismiss the claims against the two.
Experts say that if Francis chooses to tackle the issue head-on and apologize to the largely-ignored victims, it could be a landmark moment of his papacy.
Here are some takeaways from news agencies’s report ahead of the papal visit.
Belo suddenly retired in 2002 as the head of the church in East Timor, citing health reasons and stress.
Belo, today 76, was then sent by the Vatican and his Salesian missionary order to another former Portuguese colony, Mozambique, to work as a missionary priest where he said he spent his time “teaching catechism to children, giving retreats to young people.”
It wasn’t until 2022 that the allegations against him became widely known, when Dutch journalist Tjiyske Lingsma published a report detailing them.
The day after Lingsma’s story went out, the Vatican confirmed that Belo had been secretly sanctioned two years earlier, and that restrictions placed on him included a ban on voluntary contact with minors.
Lingsma also helped bring to light the case of missionary Richard Daschbach to light with a report in 2019.
Rumors had been building against the priest, and by the time the report was published, he had already confessed in a letter to church authorities to abusing young girls from at least 1991 to 2012.
“It is impossible for me to remember even the faces of many of them, let alone the names,” he wrote.
The 87-year-old was defrocked by the Vatican and criminally charged in East Timor, where he was convicted in 2021 and is now serving 12 years in prison.
Belo won the Nobel Peace Prize for his bravery in drawing international attention to Indonesian human rights abuses during the long and bloody conflict against Indonesia, sharing it with current East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, in its citation, praised Belo’s courage in refusing to be intimidated by Indonesian forces. The committee noted that while trying to get the United Nations to arrange a plebiscite for East Timor, he smuggled out two witnesses to a bloody 1991 massacre so they could testify to the U.N. human rights commission in Geneva.
Similarly, Daschbach, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, was widely celebrated for his role in helping save lives in the struggle for independence, particularly in the remote enclave of Oecusse, where he spent decades as a missionary.
More broadly, the church’s opposition to Indonesia’s military occupation and support for the resistance over years of bloody fighting that saw as many as 200,000 people killed, is so respected that it is even noted in the preamble to the young country’s constitution.
That has fostered an environment where it is difficult for victims of abuse to speak out for fear of being labeled anti-church, and where men like Belo and Daschbach continue to receive support from all walks of society.
Even after Daschbach’s conviction, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, an independence hero himself, has visited him in prison — hand-feeding him cake and serving him wine on his birthday — and has said winning the ex-priest’s early release is a priority for him.
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