On Tuesday afternoon last week, around half the population of Timor-Leste, at least 600,000 people, attended a mass held by Pope Francis in Dili.
It was a joyous and complicated occasion. The pope preached about humbleness while sitting on a seat imported from Portugal, on a million-dollar podium built on a place that has variously been a bird sanctuary, a dumping ground for murdered dissidents and a camp for internally displaced people. The people who lived there (and many others in Dili over the past few months) were roughly moved on.
The cost of the visit was reported as being US$12 million, and in the week leading up to it those whose ideas or existence authorities found unseemly (including squatters, street vendors, activists and journalists) had it impressed on them, through beatings, arrests, evictions and threats, that they best stay out of the way.
And yet, concerned as people were, when he flew into Dili on Monday September 9, Amu Papa received an ecstatic welcome.
The streets had been scrubbed, the plastic bottle problem brought temporarily under control, and the roads lined for kilometres with adoring pilgrims shaded by half a million dollars worth of Vatican-branded umbrellas. People laid tais on the ground so they could be blessed by the holy tires. They danced the tebe dahur.
But the main event was the Papal Mass.
As the hour approached, an enormous crowd filled the main road from the city to the airport, white shirts shimmering in the late afternoon light. The pope’s first visit in 1989 had been watched over by Indonesian secret police and soldiers and ended in a fracas when juventude unveiled a pro-independence banner. Although rumours that Jesus himself was spotted in Tuesday crowds need to be treated with extreme scepticism, the pontiff’s return to a free Timor-Leste is a miracle enough.
The papal sermon riffed on the theme of “smallness”, and unlike the pope’s security detail (at one point they didn’t recognise Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão and hustled him away when he tried to approach), included some messaging that was exceptionally clever.
Timor-Leste has a young population, as well as unaddressed issues with child malnutrition and clerical abuse. Nodding to this was the pope’s musing that children should be cared for as a blessing and serve as a reminder that people (especially clergy) should be humble.
Whether that’s a cowardly cop-out or an effective way to communicate as a guest in a society that shies away from direct confrontation is a matter of option.
His overarching theme of “let your faith be your culture” was also sharp.
News coverage of the pope’s visit to Timor has emphasised that Timor is “deeply Catholic”, which is both true and an oversimplification.
Although Catholic monks first arrived in Timor in the sixteenth century, until the 1970s the majority of the population were not baptised. Instead they followed their own religion, which revolves around the presence (and placation) of a sacred (lulik) and invisible realm of watchful spirits.
Those who follow lulik tend sacred sites and sacrificial altars, hold rituals to call the rain by invoking (hamulak) wild spirits at the holy rock, or ask the help of their ancestors for anything from health problems to school exams.
Sometimes people simply refer to it as “culture” (kultura).
It was only after 1975, when Indonesia compelled the population to choose one of six endorsed religions, and forcibly resettled people in urban areas, that Catholicism took off. The church quickly won the loyalty of Timor-Leste’s people for its willingness to advocate for them.
It is worth noting that Catholicism did not replace lulik. Instead the new religion is seen as having taken root because it was, and is, accepted by the old one. To this day most people in Timor don’t see any contradiction in praying at the rock or making offerings to their ancestors with an enthusiastic Catholic identity.
Officially the church doesn’t approve of this. In a recent interview, Timorese Cardinal Virgílio do Carmo da Silva unkindly described lulik as an “animistic cult”. And yet with the church struggling to remain relevant around the world, the last thing the pope wants to do is alienate a country that is still enthusiastic.
Suffice to say, when Pope Francis says “may your faith be your culture”, both ordinary folk for whom lulik is central to their faith, and the clergy who sometimes tell their congregations it is literally from the devil, hear something they like.
Francis’ oblique warning to the congregation of “crocodiles” who “want to change your culture”, probably a veiled swipe at NGOs that promote birth control and LGBTQIA+ rights (often sponsored by Western aid), was also calculated to avoid provoking anyone.
As Timor-Leste marks 25 years of freedom, a visit from the pope is the gift its people wanted. Although some might question the expense of hosting him, that want alone is arguably enough to justify the cost. As he flies back to Rome, the existential economic and political challenges that Timor-Leste faces are still there. But what the vibrant crowd that came out to meet him shows is that the country has a bright future, if these challenges can be solved.
