When Pope Francis visits East Timor, he will face a church that is dealing with child abuse allegations. These crimes have been mostly overlooked by the country’s independence heroes, even though East Timor is predominantly Catholic.
Instances involve Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, a Nobel laureate who played a crucial role in securing the independence of the youngest nation in Asia from Indonesian control. However, the Vatican discreetly penalised him due to allegations of his long-term sexual abuse of young children.
There is a demand for the 87-year-old pope to address the issue of child abuse when he arrives in the former Portuguese colony on Monday as part of his Asia-Pacific tour.
“We ask Your Holiness to encourage the leaders and the people of Timor-Leste to take more effective measures to prevent sexual abuse,” the Timor-Leste NGO Forum, a civil society coalition, wrote in a letter Wednesday to Francis.
BishopAccountability.org, a documentation centre on Catholic Church abuse, also called on the Vatican’s sexual abuse commission chief, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, to “urge” Francis to “be the victims’ champion” on his visit.
Catholic-majority East Timor is one of many countries that has suffered the global scourge of child abuse by members of the clergy long veiled in secrecy.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II accepted the abrupt resignation of Bishop Belo, then the head of East Timor’s church, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.
The Vatican said it was for health reasons but did not explain further.
It then permitted him to be sent to Mozambique as a missionary, where he worked with children before he moved to Portugal.
The Vatican secretly sanctioned the bishop in 2020 after claims he sexually abused underage boys over 20 years up to 2002.
It banned Belo from any contact with children or with East Timor, conditions it said he formally accepted.
Only when Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer reported the restrictions in 2022, including testimony from a victim who said Belo raped them, did the Vatican go public.
The Dutch magazine report’s author says allegations about Belo were known in 2002.
Francis later suggested the decision to let Belo retire instead of face consequences was made when attitudes were different.
The bishop had won the Nobel Prize for his defence of human rights during the Indonesian occupation, which lasted more than two decades.
He is revered at home for sheltering young demonstrators and saving their lives.
It has helped him retain strong support among the country’s 1.3 million people, of which 98 per cent are Catholic.
“We feel we have lost him. We miss him,” Maria Dadi, East Timor national youth council president, told AFP.
“Because, after all, he contributed to the struggle of Timor-Leste.”
In another case, defrocked American priest Richard Daschbach was found guilty in 2021 of abusing orphaned, disadvantaged girls.
He was sentenced to 12 years in prison but has also found support at the highest levels of Timorese society.
Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao courted controversy last year when he visited Daschbach to celebrate his birthday and shared the cake with the convicted paedophile. He also attended his trial.
Many in the country favour Belo returning for the pope’s visit.
“We are unfortunate without the presence of Bishop Belo,” said 58-year-old academic Francisco Amaral da Silva.
“The government and the Catholic Church should invite him.”
East Timor’s presidential office did not respond to a request for comment. President Jose Ramos-Horta has said punishments for Belo should be handled by the Vatican.
The pontiff will meet with the Catholic faithful, children, and Jesuits and preside over a massive mass during his stay in Dili’s capital.
But it remains unclear if he will raise cases that have shocked observers of one of the world’s poorest countries.
The pope’s schedule does not include a meeting with victims, and the Vatican did not comment before he departed Rome.
Yet he could ad-lib the subject in one of his speeches, which would be a strong gesture.
Francis could also meet victims privately as he has done before, the latest on a 2023 Portugal trip.
But survivor advocates said the pope must acknowledge the sexual violence by Church officials on East Timorese children, including by Belo.
“Those abused by Bishop Belo and other clergy will expect a public statement by Pope Francis on the Church’s continued failure to deal with its wayward clergy,” said Tony Gribben, founder of the Northern Ireland-based Dromore survivors group.
Gribben said a meeting would “have limited value”, citing apologies given by Francis to abuse victims on an Ireland trip in 2018.
“The event was a well-crafted PR exercise,” he added.
“But since then, it’s business as usual.”
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