‘Children are your wealth’

At the Mass he presided over on the esplanade of Taci Tolu, the Pope told hundreds of thousands of faithful: “Beware of these crocodiles who want to change your culture.” He also invited the local Church to be like the perfume of sandalwood for which Timor has been known since ancient times, and to spread “the perfume of the Gospel against everything that humiliates, degrades and destroys human life.” To the priests: “People here respect you, but you must not act like the powerful who trample on others.”

Dili () – “I’ve been thinking a lot about what Timor has to offer? Sandalwood? Fishing? No, the best thing about Timor is its people. I can’t forget the people who are on the side of the road with their children. You have so many children! But be careful of these crocodiles who want to change your culture, who want to change your history. Stay loyal. And don’t get close to these crocodiles because they bite, and they bite a lot.”

With these words, Pope Francis said goodbye this afternoon to the huge crowd that took part in the Mass on the esplanade of Taci Tolu, about ten kilometres from the centre of Dili, which concluded the pontiff’s day in East Timor, the third stage of his apostolic journey to Asia and Oceania. Hundreds of thousands of people arrived from the early hours of the morning at the historic place where John Paul II presided in 1989 at a Eucharistic celebration that marked the history of this people, deprived of its independence for so long. Some estimates speak of 600,000 people, almost half of the entire population of East Timor, although many Indonesian Catholics from the other side of the large island were also part of the crowd, a visible sign of that reconciliation that Francis praised yesterday after the long dark years of a bloody conflict.

In his homily, the Pope – accompanied by Cardinal Virgilio Carmo da Silva, Apostolic Administrator of Dili, whom he chose two years ago to incorporate this periphery into the College of Cardinals – praised the little ones. He began with the children, who are the great wealth of East Timor: “You are a young country, and in every corner you feel life pulsating and bustling. The presence of so many young people, so many children, is a gift – the Pontiff commented -. But above all it is a sign, because making space for children, for the little ones, welcoming them, caring for them, and making ourselves small before God and before our brothers and sisters, are precisely the attitudes that open us to the action of the Lord. By becoming children we allow God to act in us.”

“We are not afraid to make ourselves small before God and before one another,” Francis said. “We are not afraid to lose our lives, to give our time, to review our programs and to resize our projects when necessary, not to minimize them, but to make them even better by giving ourselves and welcoming others.”

In this small country, on the far periphery of the great Asian continent, the Pope had made the same invitation in the other meetings of the day. With the bishops, priests and pastoral workers gathered in the cathedral of Dili, he referred to the image of the sandalwood tree, which grows abundantly in Timor and which has been a wood much sought after for its fragrance since ancient times. Using this image, he referred to the different aspects of that Catholic identity in which 98% of the population recognises itself. “Like a sandalwood tree, always green, always strong, which grows and produces fruit,” he said, “you too are missionary disciples perfumed by the Holy Spirit to permeate the life of the Holy People of God.” And the perfume of the Gospel, he added, “must be spread against everything that humiliates, degrades and even destroys human life, against the plagues that generate inner emptiness and suffering, such as alcoholism, violence and lack of respect for the dignity of women.”

The Pope also asked the priests of East Timor to make themselves small: “I have been told that the people affectionately address you by calling you ‘Amu’, which here is the most important title, meaning ‘lord’ – he said -. But this must not make you feel superior to the people, nor lead you to the temptation of pride and power; it must not make you think of your ministry as a social privilege and act like the powerful who trample on others.”

In the previous meeting with a group of disabled children at the Irmas Alma school of the Church of East Timor, he had referred to what he calls “the sacrament of the poor.” “When Jesus speaks of the Last Judgement,” he said, “He says to some: ‘Come with me.’ But he does not say to them: ‘Come with me because you were baptized, because you were confirmed, because you were married by the Church, because you did not lie, because you did not steal…’ No! He says: ‘Come with me because you took care of me.'” A clear mission for a community that, as the motto of this visit to East Timor says, is called to make faith its own culture.