By Niniek Karmini, David Rising & Nicole Winfield | The Associated Press DILI, East Timor—When the Vatican acknowledged in 2022 that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, it appeared that the global clergy sexual abuse scandal that has...
DILI, East Timor—When the Vatican acknowledged in 2022 that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, it appeared that the global clergy sexual abuse scandal that has compromised the Catholic Church’s credibility around the world had finally arrived in Asia’s newest country.
“I think this is the time for the pope to say some words to the victims, to apologize,” she said in an interview from Amsterdam. If he’s not there, she said, “that is not good in my opinion,” because it will confirm he is being sanctioned by the Vatican. Only about 20 percent of East Timor’s people were Catholic when Indonesia invaded in 1975, shortly after Portugal abandoned it as a colony.
Their heroic status, and societal factors in Asia, where the culture tends to confer much power on adults and authority figures, helps explain why the men are still revered while elsewhere in the world such cases are met with outrage, said Anne Barrett Doyle, of the online resource Bishop Accountability.
But despite his confession and court testimony from victims that detailed the abuse, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, an independence hero himself, has visited Daschbach in prison—hand-feeding him cake and serving him wine on his birthday—and has said winning the ex-priest’s early release is a priority for him.
Suspicion arose that Belo, like others before him, had been allowed to quietly retire rather than face any reckoning, given the reputational harm to the church that would have caused. Her story garnered international attention, as well as the Vatican’s acknowledgement of the case, but in East Timor was primarily met with skepticism and negative reactions toward her reporting. Her 2019 story exposing the Daschbach case eventually prompted authorities to charge him, but also did not lead to the outpouring of anger that she had anticipated.
The chancellor of the Dili Diocese today, Father Ludgerio Martins da Silva, said the cases of Belo and Daschbach were the Vatican’s jurisdiction, and that most people consider the sex abuse scandals a thing of the past.
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