East Timor

East Timor is a largely Christian state in Southeast Asia that occupies the eastern half of the island of Timor in the Indonesian archipelago. At the time of Portugal's relinquishment of colonial control over East Timor in 1974, only one third of the population espoused Catholicism as their religious faith, the majority worshipping luliks or animist objects. There was no pressure for mass conversion to Catholicism on the part of the Portuguese colonizers, though there had already been some missionary work mixing local ancestor worship and Catholic doctrine, and emphasis had been placed by the missionaries on the apparent parallelisms between traditional indigenous Makasae mythology and the Old Testament. Following World War II, the Catholic Church used Tetum, an indigenous East Timor language, thereby rendering the liturgy an expression of national identity, and the Church was one of the only colonial institutions to highlight abuses in the Portuguese regime.

It was the Indonesian invasion and subsequent annexation of Timor in December 1975 that served as a catalyst for mass popular Catholic conversion in Timor. The Catholic Church came to prominence as a focal point for resistance to Indonesian attempts to forcibly integrate Timor through the Church's documentation of human rights abuses, calls for national self-determination, and provision of sanctuary for Timorese dissidents. The “Catholicization” of Timor culminated in Bishop Carlos Belo's winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 (along with José Ramos-Horta, a prominent Timorese nationalist). In East Timor, Catholicism interacted with nationalism to provide a moral basis for action, a centripetal force uniting potentially disparate identities, and an institutional framework for mobilization and action. These factors are particularly apparent in the Santa Cruz massacre (November 1991), when protesters took refuge from Indonesian Army intimidation in Catholic graveyards and chapels and were subsequently massacred. Sites of massacre, such as the Santa Cruz cemetery, emerged as places to commemorate fallen nationalist heroes. In the Timorese case, Catholicism translated worldly suffering—that is, massacres and oppression—into spiritual injustices against the Timorese “nation,” and these were viewed as being perpetrated by Islam against Christianity. In these circumstances, the Timorese struggle for national self-determination emerged increasingly as one shaped by Catholic identity and practice.