Dili – Pope Francis arrived on Sept 9 in Timor-Leste – a predominantly Catholic nation in South-east Asia – for a three-day visit that will include an open-air celebration of mass, which the Vatican says may include more than half the population of 1.3 million.
The 87-year-old pontiff is on an ambitious 12-day visit to four countries across South-east Asia and Oceania, his longest overseas journey yet.
He came to Timor-Leste from Papua New Guinea, where on Sept 8 he delivered medical supplies to a small town located at the edge of a vast jungle, in one of the most remote areas of the world.
Pope Francis landed in Dili, the Timorese capital, on the afternoon of Sept 9. He was met at the airport by President Jose Manuel Ramos-Horta and a group of schoolchildren dressed in traditional outfits, who offered him flowers and a tais, a woven ceremonial scarf.
Timor-Leste, a half-island nation north of Australia, gained independence from Indonesia in 2002 after a brutal, decades-long occupation. Pope Francis is the second pope to visit, following John Paul II, who came in 1989, in a trip that gave the country's independence movement an historic boost.
The country is likely the most Catholic in the world, with the Vatican saying some 96 per cent of Timorese are adherents of the faith.
Organisers are preparing for some 750,000 people to attend a mass with Pope Francis on Sept 10 at the Tasitolu, a wide, dusty coastal area where Indonesian forces were known to bury killed Timorese independence fighters.
Since independence, the country has struggled with rebuilding its infrastructure and economy. In 2014, the World Bank estimated that some 42 per cent of Timorese live in poverty and that some 47 per cent of children are stunted because of malnutrition.
Although Timorese have remained overwhelmingly Catholic, the church in the country has been affected recently by abuse scandals.
In 2022, the Vatican confirmed it had sanctioned Timorese Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo following allegations that he sexually abused boys in Timor-Leste in the 1990s. The bishop, who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr Ramos-Horta for their independence efforts, lives in Portugal.
In 2021, defrocked American priest Richard Daschbach was sentenced to 12 years in prison for sexually abusing girls under his care in Timor-Leste.
A leading abuse survivor advocacy group called on Pope Francis to speak openly about the cases during his visit. "The Pope must denounce the two men by name," said Ms Anne Barrett Doyle of abuse tracking group BishopAccountability.org. "His words could have an enormous positive impact."
The Pope's first address in the country will come later on Sept 9, when he is due to address the political authorities.
Pope Francis is visiting Timor-Leste until Sept 11 as part of a tour that also included a stop in Indonesia. He travels next to Singapore before returning to Rome on Sept 13.