By UCA News reporter
TIMOR-LESTE – Dioceses bordering Timor-Leste and the Indonesian government are collaborating to help Catholics attend the papal visit to the Catholic-majority Asian nation in September.
Indonesia’s Kupang archdiocese and Atambua diocese in West Timor, which shares borders with Timor-Leste, have asked priests, nuns, and the faithful to register with them if they want to attend Pope Francis’ visit to Timor-Leste.
Along with Church authorities in Timor-Leste, the dioceses have made arrangements with the immigration office to process travel documents.
Father Erminus Fkun, secretary of Kupang archdiocese, said Catholics should register themselves with their parishes which can be forwarded to the immigration office.
For the benefit of Catholics who live on small islands like Rote, Alor and Sabu, immigration officials will visit them to facilitate their trip to Timor-Leste, Fkun said.
He added that the archdiocese has made an arrangement with the bishops’ council in Timor-Leste.
Yosef Hello, secretary of the Pastoral Center in Atambua diocese, said three districts of Belu, Malaka and North Central Timor under the diocese share borders with Timor-Leste.
The visitors must possess a minimum of US$100 in cash, Hello said and added that people who had “bloody hands” as a result of the Timor-Leste independence conflict in 1999 are unwelcome.
We have a special arrangement with the immigration office to facilitate the visit, he said.
Marciana Dominika Jone, regional head of the Ministry of Law in Christian-majority East Nusa Tenggara province, said the department wants to bring its “services closer to the community” to facilitate the trip to the neighboring nation.
She said Catholics need not go all the way to the immigration office located in the provincial capital Kupang.
“Data can be immediately submitted to us so that passport services can be quickly scheduled before Pope Francis arrives in Dili,” the capital of Timor-Leste, she said.
Nanang Mustafa, head of the Kupang Immigration Office, said visitors can obtain passports within three days instead of the usual two-week time frame.
“We are optimizing all resources to help the community,” he said.
Fransiskus Mone, 72, a Catholic from South Central Timor Regency in East Nusa Tenggara province, said he wants to attend the Mass celebrated by the pope in Dili.
“I have to go there because I want to meet the Pope. If not now, when?” he said.
Pope Francis will visit Timor-Leste from Sept. 9 for three days. He will celebrate a Mass on Sep 10 in Tasitolu in Dili where St Pope John Paul II held a Mass during his visit in 1987 when Timor-Leste was under Indonesian rule.
The Indonesian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, meanwhile, has asked its dioceses to send representatives to attend the four-day papal visit to Indonesia from Sep 3.
“The exact number of visitors is being ascertained by a committee,” Father Anthonius Gregorius Lalu, deputy coordinator for media relations of the papal visit committee, told UCA News.
Bishop Dominikus Saku of Atambua said his diocese wanted up to 80 representatives to visit Jakarta to attend the papal Mass at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta on Sep 5, but no one came forward to register.
“People prefer to go to Timor-Leste,” the prelate added.
Apart from Indonesia and Timor-Leste, the 87-year-old pope will visit Singapore and Papua New Guinea as part of his first trip this year. The 12-day Asia visit, starting Sep 2, is the longest of his 11-year papacy. – UCA News
