Child abuse scandals hang over Pope’s East Timor visit

Pope Francis faces child abuse scandals in East Timor during Asia-Pacific tour, calls for action.

When Pope Francis becomes the first pontiff to visit an independent East Timor, he will confront a clergy beset by child abuse scandals that have been largely ignored by the deeply Catholic country’s freedom heroes.

Cases include Nobel-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, who helped Asia’s youngest nation free itself from Indonesian occupation, but who the Vatican secretly punished over claims he had sexually abused young children for decades.

There are calls for the 87-year-old pontiff to speak out on child abuse when he lands in the former Portuguese colony on Monday (September 9, 2024) as part of his Asia-Pacific tour.

“We ask Your Holiness to encourage the leaders and the people of Timor-Leste to take more effective measures to prevent sexual abuse,” the Timor-Leste NGO Forum, a civil society coalition, wrote in a letter Wednesday (September 4, 2024) to the Pope.

BishopAccountability.org, a documentation centre on Catholic Church abuse, also called on the Vatican’s sexual abuse commission chief, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, to “urge” the Pope to “be the victims’ champion” on his visit.

Catholic-majority East Timor is one of many countries that has suffered the global scourge of child abuse by members of the clergy long veiled in secrecy.

In 2002 Pope John Paul II accepted the abrupt resignation of Bishop Belo, then the head of East Timor’s church, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.