Pope Francis is coming to East Timor; crowds could reach up to 750,000

By Joshua McElwee

DILI (Reuters) – Pope Francis arrived in East Timor, a predominantly Catholic country in Southeast Asia, on Monday for a three-day visit that will include an outdoor Mass that the Vatican said could be attended by more than half the country's 1.3 million people.

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. He was received at the airport by President José Manuel Ramos-Horta and two young women in traditional dress, who presented him with flowers and a tais, a woven ceremonial scarf, which the Pope briefly put on.

Tens of thousands of people filled entire blocks around the airport as Francis departed in a white, open-top vehicle. Many used umbrellas in the white and yellow colors of the Vatican flag to protect themselves from the direct sun at 31 degrees Celsius.

East Timor, an island nation north of Australia, gained independence from Indonesia in 2002 after decades of brutal occupation. Francis is the second pope to visit the country, after John Paul II in 1989. His trip gave the country's independence movement a historic boost.

The country is probably the most Catholic in the world. According to the Vatican, about 96 percent of Timorese are followers of the faith.

Organizers are preparing for about 750,000 people to attend a Mass with Francis on Tuesday in Tasitolu, a sprawling, dusty coastal area where Indonesian forces are known to have buried slain Timorese independence fighters.

Since independence, the country has struggled to rebuild its infrastructure and economy. In 2014, the World Bank estimated that about 42 percent of Timorese people live in poverty and about 47 percent of children suffer from developmental delays due to malnutrition.

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 shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Ramos-Horta in 1996 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.

A leading abuse victim advocacy group urged Francis to speak openly about the cases during his visit. “The pope must denounce the two men by name,” said Anne Barrett Doyle of the abuse tracking group BishopAccountability.org. “His words could have a tremendous positive impact.”

The Pope's first address in the country will take place later on Monday, when Francis will address political authorities.

Francis is visiting East Timor until Wednesday as part of a trip that includes a stop in Indonesia. He will then travel to Singapore before returning to Rome on September 13.

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Lincoln Feast and John Mair)