Pope Francis continues controversial Southeast Asia tour with visit to East Timor's capital

Follow live as Pope Francis visits East Timor's capital, Dili, on Monday 9 September, where he will attend a welcoming ceremony and meet President José Ramos-Horta and other government officials, as well as members of civil society and the diplomatic corps.

The 87-year-old pope is on an ambitious 12-day visit to four countries in Southeast Asia and Oceania, his longest foreign trip to date.

He arrived in East Timor from Papua New Guinea, where he delivered medical supplies on Sunday to a small town on the edge of a vast jungle in one of the most remote areas in the world.

Francis landed in Dili, the capital of Timor, on Monday afternoon.

At the airport, he was met by the President and a group of schoolchildren in traditional clothing, who presented him with flowers and a tais, a woven ceremonial scarf.

East Timor, an island nation north of Australia, gained independence from Indonesia in 2002 after decades of brutal occupation.

Francis is the second papal visit after John Paul II in 1989, which gave a historic boost to the country's independence movement.

The country is probably the most Catholic in the world. According to the Vatican, around 96 percent of Timorese belong to the faith.

Although the vast majority of Timorese have remained Catholic, the country's church has recently been rocked by abuse scandals.

In 2022, the Vatican confirmed that it had imposed sanctions on Timorese Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo after he was accused of sexually abusing boys in Timor in the 1990s.

Belo, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 together with Ramos-Horta for their independence efforts, lives in Portugal.

A year earlier, dismissed American priest Richard Daschbach was sentenced to twelve years in prison for sexually abusing girls in his care in Timor.