Pope Francis will come face to face with the Timorese faithful on his first trip to the country.
A billboard welcoming Pope Francis stands above a mural honoring Bishop Belo and three others as national heros in Dili, East Timor , Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024.
Even without pressure from within East Timor to address the scandals, it would be deeply meaningful to the victims if Francis did, said Tjiyske Lingsma, the Dutch journalist who helped bring both abuse cases to light. Despite the official acknowledgment, many in East Timor still don't believe it, like Dili university student Martinha Goveia, who is still expecting Belo will show up to be at Francis' side during his upcoming visit.
Timorese officials refused to answer questions about the Belo case, but there's been no attempt to avoid mentioning him, with a giant billboard in Dili welcoming Pope Francis, whose visit starts Sept. 9, placed right above a mural honoring Belo and three others as national heroes. Belo won the Nobel Peace Prize for his bravery in drawing international attention to Indonesian human rights abuses during the conflict, and American missionary Richard Daschbach was widely celebrated for his role in helping save lives in the struggle for independence.
In 2018, as rumors built against Daschbach, the priest confessed in a letter to church authorities to abusing young girls from at least 1991 to 2012.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.
There, he has said, he spent his time "teaching catechism to children, giving retreats to young people." Today he lives in Portugal. Lingsma said she first heard allegations against Belo in 2002, the same year East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, won its formal independence after the Indonesian occupation ended in 1999. She said she wasn't able to investigate the case and build enough evidence to publish her story on him until two decades later.
Pedophilia and sexual violence are common enemies in East Timor, and we should not mix them up with the struggle for independence," said Valentim da Costa Pinto, executive director of The Timor-Leste NGO Forum, an umbrella organization for some 270 NGOs.
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