'Unbreakable bond between faith and culture' - Cardinal Da Silva on Pope in Timor-Leste

By Cardinal Virgilio do Carmo da Silva

The Catholic faithful of Timor-Leste have been waiting for Pope Francis’ visit for a long time. Joy permeates the streets of this small nation, which was a Portuguese colony until 1975, and then occupied by the Indonesian military until 1999. In 2002, it became a sovereign nation, with a majority Catholic population.

When the Pope’s visit to Timor-Leste was announced, on 12 April 2024, the entire population welcomed the news with enthusiasm, joy and a desire to welcome the Holy Father.

Pope Francis will be the second Pontiff to visit the country, after John Paul II, who travelled to Timor-Leste on 12 October 1989. At the time, however, it was still a province of Indonesia.

Therefore, Pope Francis will be the first Pope to visit Timor-Leste as a new sovereign nation that gained its independence on 20 May 2002. The visit to Timor-Leste is part of the papal trip in Asia and the Pacific.

In order to better organize the visit, the government of Timor-Leste and the local Church set up a joint team. The two institutions have been working well together from the start.

As for infrastructure, nothing was left up to chance. The solemn Eucharistic celebration that will take place on 10 September will be held in a strategic location, the esplanade of Taci Tolu in Dili, which will gather Timorese faithful and a number of pilgrims from Indonesia and Australia. Some 700,000 people are expected to participate.

During his stay in Dili, the Pope will also meet with young people at the “Centro de Convenções”; more than 4,000 young people will likely attend. The Pope will also meet with priests, religious, seminarians and catechists in the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. He will then meet with children with disabilities from the “Irmãs Alma” school.

The Pope’s visit to Timor-Leste will be an important event for building the faith and affirming the cultural and religious identity of the Timorese people.

The central theme of the visit is: May your faith be your culture. Faith, in fact, was one of the important pillars in the fight for freedom, which allowed us not to lose hope in the long moments of suffering.

The liturgical commission has circulated a short prayer for parishes, religious communities and religious formation houses to say after daily and Sunday Mass. The intentions of this prayer are for Pope Francis’ visit and health.

Regarding the theme chosen for the visit, the objective of the Timorese Bishops’ Conference is to help the Christian faith live and grow with more ardour in the heart of the Timorese people.

The bishops have set up some meetings to inform and form the faithful from the three Dioceses of Timor-Leste: Dili, Baucau and Maliana. The theme of formation and catechesis is tied to the Pope’s primacy and to Pope Francis as a person.

The goal is precisely to help the faithful deepen their understanding of the primacy of the Pope and of Pope Francis’ teachings, but also to urge them to harmonize faith and local culture.

Beyond the formation activities in each diocese, the Episcopal Commission has also organized two academic seminars and a national retreat, with the goal of diving deeper into the theme of the Papal visit.

International speakers from Indonesia and the Philippines intervened, as did national speakers who presented their own ideas. The theme of the first academic seminar was: Asian culture and the Christian faith. There were three speakers: Verbite Fr. Leo Kleden from Indonesia; Domingos Maia, professor at the Catholic University of Timor-Leste; and, Fr. Isidorus Yoseph Djawa, a Franciscan missionary and professor at the “Dom Jaime Garcia Goulart” Institute of Philosophy and Theology in Dili.

The theme of the second academic seminar was: The Christian faith in a multicultural context. The speakers were: from Indonesia, Jesuit Fr. Frans Magnis-Suseno; from the Philippines, Dr. Estella Padilla, and Dr. Benjami Cortereal, professor at the national university of Timor-Leste. Lastly, on 31 August, a national retreat will be led by Fr Antonius Eddy Kristiyanto, OFM.

The Church in Timor-Leste hopes that Pope Francis’ presence will bring peace and hope to the Christian faithful and transform them interiorly.

The local Church also hopes that with the Pontiff’s presence among us, the Catholic faithful will understand their faith, celebrate it and bear witness to it in their daily lives.

The Christian faith should become culture in the heart of the country’s Catholic Christians, as Pope Francis said in his address to Timorese bishops on the occasion of their ad limina  visit at the Vatican, on 17 March 2014.

On that occasion, the Pontiff also prayed that the Church in Timor-Leste may evangelize culture and inculturate the Gospel in the local context, so that the faith may translate into the daily life of Timorese Catholics.