Pope Francis' visit, part of a tour that includes stops in Jakarta and Singapore, is set to resonate in Dili, despite a string of abuse scandals that has plagued the church
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“It was an opportunity for us to express our right to fight for our liberation,” recalled Father Francisco Barreto, who was among the crowd when protesters unfurled banners calling for independence in front of the world’s TV cameras for the first time. After a brutal, decades-long occupation by Indonesia, East Timor, or Timor Leste, gained independence in 2002 following a UN-supervised referendum.
A year earlier, a defrocked American priest was sentenced to 12 years in prison for sexually abusing girls under his care in Timor.“There is a lot of resistance from some Timorese to thinking about those awful cases because of the historical importance of the church to the successful achievement of self-determination,” said Michael Leach, from Australia’s Swinburne University.
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