WALKING WITH THE EXCLUDED
By Michael Musgrave
There’s no arrivals hall at Dili airport. Passengers with luggage simply emerge into an open area under a huge Bintang Beer sign to grab a taxi, or like me, simply wait for friends to pick them up.
What is there for Fr Roberto Madeira Encarnação SJ, the Jesuit parish priest of Railaco, to do there outside in the heat when he learns that my Qantas flight from Darwin has been delayed? I guess he must have put the waiting time to good use, peacefully enjoying a few moments of welcome shuteye in his vehicle. After greeting me warmly, a cheerful Roberto ushers me into the passenger seat and goes to throw my luggage into the back. But first he must get the almost horizontal front seat back into position!
Fr Erik John Gerilla SJ (third from left) Timor-Leste Regional Superior, praying at a shrine to honour the first Timorese priest, Fr Abílio José Caldas. The latter was the grandson of the King of Samoro, who gave the Jesuits permission to stay in Soibada. The martyr is the great-great uncle of Fr Isaias Abilio Caldas SJ (partially obscured on the far right), the Rector of Instituto São João de Brito (ISJB) in Timor-Leste.
I’m in Timor-Leste to visit the Railaco Jesuit Mission, which has been supported by St Canice’s Parish in Sydney for the past twenty years. This little rural parish is located in the mountains and – depending on your choice of vehicle and driver – about an hour away from Dili. On this trip, I’ve also been invited to participate in the special celebrations in Soibada – about three hours from Dili – to mark the establishment of the first Jesuit Mission in the country 125 years ago.
The first Jesuits arrived in Soibada in 1899 and were led by Fr Sebastião Aparício da Silva SJ, who had already authored the first Portuguese-Tetum Dictionary decades earlier. Despite the fact that I’ve travelled to East Timor seven times since 2009, Soibada is an area where I’ve never been, so it holds some excitement for me.
Fr Roberto and I head towards the Railaco Jesuit Mission on a new highway that is being readied for the visit of Pope Francis in early September.
Graphic by David McMahon.
I’ve always enjoyed my interaction with the Jesuits at the Mission. They share their highs and lows freely and that openness inspires me to get on board to better understand what’s moving them. I aim to align my talents and passions with theirs and lend a hand in any way I can. On reaching the Mission, I check in to what’s become my usual room, the “Bishop’s Suite”, at the back of the old church building.
The term Bishop’s Suite is probably misleading. Instead of colonial grandeur, it’s bare-bones basic, at the back of the original old church in Railaco. The, er, suite is located at the back of the old church building but it does have some upmarket touches: red curtains and a doily on the table. It is named after Bishop (now Cardinal) Virgílio do Carmo da Silva SDB of Dili, who stayed here when he officiated at the opening and blessing of the new parish church in 2017.
Inside, God help me, are a plastic pail and bucket of cold water that define the “shower” routine for the next three days. Nothing changes much up there in the mountains. The whole Railaco experience is so foreign, but coupled with being treated like such an honoured guest, it has its own sense of luxury. Money can’t buy this!
Duck soup (no connection to the Marx Brothers)
We have a dinner invitation to join Sr Rina from the Congregation of the Sisters of St Paul of Chartres (SPC), our neighbours at the convent next door. The young Timorese sisters and novices get busy boiling up a pot of the most delicious duck soup, cooked over firewood in what’s referred to in East Timor as an outdoor “dirty kitchen”. Being daughters of farmers, these young women are also proficient with an axe, chopping the head off a duck and de-feathering it deftly, ready for the pot. The evening brings back vivid recollections of my father laughing raucously at ‘Duck Soup’, the old black and white movie starring the Marx Brothers.
When we get back to the Mission, there are no lights. A blackout that is to last for three days is upon us, but life goes on. After much scurrying around, Fr Martin Antonio Abad Santos SJ, aka Fr Bong, comes up with what looks like a miner’s light with an elastic band to wear around my head. It helps me get from the bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night without stubbing my toe. Later, Fr Domingos Manuel Moreira SJ finds me a battery pack and leads to get my Apple watch going again.
The roosters start crowing each day from 4am, and I look forward to that strangely peaceful hour or two lying in my bed listening to the farmyard noises and dogs barking while waiting for the dawn. This morning, with no electricity, the local baker can’t give us this day our daily bread. The Sisters to the rescue once again, with a plastic bag full of “bread rolls” they’d boiled in a pot of water and dropped off for the Jesuits’ breakfast. They are very good, when spread with lashings of butter, peanut butter and slices of copper banana that Vietnamese Br Thaddeus Duong Tha SJ picks from one of the banana trees growing down in the gully. A cup of steaming hot Timorese coffee washes it down well.
The children’s feeding program
Fr Bong, the Filipino Jesuit who initiated the sister parish relationship with Fr Steve Sinn SJ from St Canice’s twenty years ago, packs me off to accompany long-time volunteer mother and grandmother Christina Da Cruz on the children’s feeding program. Pelting rain, slippery, muddy roads and landslides are no deterrent to the band of happy volunteers packed into the back of the old 4WD troop carrier as we head off around the mountains.
Fr Martin Bong SJ (left) Superior of the Railaco Jesuit Mission, with European volunteer Florian Salvignol, before setting out on the children’s feeding program. Fr Bong initiated the sister parish relationship with St Canice’s in Sydney twenty years ago. All photographs: courtesy Michael Musgrave.
Families and children in these remote communities are so very poor that it touches my heart. As our vehicle traverses the field with horn beeping, little faces of the expectant raggedy kids in threadbare clothes light up, and some come running and waving. They know there’s a big pot of tasty food sloshing around in the back of the 4WD, ready to fill their empty little bellies. Rice is the basic staple, but the nutritious “soup” of chicken, vegetables tofu and soy supplement that’s ladled over it makes it very tasty. A boiled egg and a cup of milk adds protein to the meal. Mothers of many of the kids bring along extra containers to take home “for tomorrow”. Sad but so wonderful!
Fr Bong puts it in perspective for me, explaining that the food program is intended to show the poor that they are precious. “The single meal provided by Christina and her volunteers is never a solution to the acute poverty and malnutrition faced by the children,” he says. “Although one meal cannot eradicate malnutrition, it is a concrete reminder of the attention given to others. This is part of our mission of consolation and attention.
“Communities pushed to the margins of society often feel the pain of abandonment. They often feel disenfranchised and simply forgotten by everyone. We want the beneficiaries of the food program to know that it is worth preparing food and visiting them, because they are sons and daughters of God, and the Lord does not forget them.”
After so many visits to East Timor, I still haven’t fully comprehended the huge gap between Timorese society and other developed areas. The Japanese director of our Railaco senior high school, Fr Hyoe Murayama SJ, explains to me: “So many poor Timorese families have a long history of submission and slavery. This has been caused by authoritarian and oppressive regimes. It was only in the Sixties that there was any possibility of a civilised life. Shockingly, for most, life remains quite primitive.”
A good general education is such an important factor in addressing this. This education goes much deeper than academic achievement. The Jesuits are very committed to assisting the Timorese people face their history, to know that they are loved by God, and to embrace their Timorese identity with pride. At our Railaco secondary school, Fr Hyoe spends much of his time forming teachers in Ignatian pedagogy and leading off-site retreats, so that they too can understand and assist the students.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls
The church bell tolls, waking me early on Sunday morning. Fr Bong celebrates today’s Mass in the open air. Members of the devout Railaco congregation sit on plastic chairs, with many more sheltering out under the trees. During the Mass, Fr Bong sends an altar server over to summon me up on the sanctuary to share details of our St Canice’s sister parish relationship. He does the translating. Speaking in such a setting is much more difficult than you might think. I must be very careful not to give the impression that we are the givers, and they are the takers. We are simply good neighbours, doing as good neighbours do. And my task is to say that in not so many words.
After Mass, I hitch a ride back to Dili to stay for a couple of nights before driving to Soibada. While in Dili, I spend a fascinating day in the field with Timorese Jesuit Fr Júlio Sousa SJ, Director of Jesuit Social Services. We are accompanied by Elsa Pinto, a Timorese university graduate from Melbourne, who oversees their Food Security Program initiated only three years ago. Before this was introduced, farmers would simply scatter seed over the earth and wait. Now, the size of cabbages and cauliflower growing in raised beds in fenced-off plots is testament to the success of this program. The challenge ahead is how to scale up a very successful pilot program and help more farmers to earn a living.
To mark the 125th anniversary of the arrival of the first Jesuits in Timor in 1899, we must journey from Dili to Soibada. In the pre-dawn darkness, we join Jesuits travelling in other vehicles, stopping to collect egg burgers for breakfast. We pass through orderly-looking villages with blooming flowers and vines and past the acreage of the soon to be opened Centre for Ignatian Spirituality for Peace and Reconciliation in Hera. The centre will be run by an Indonesian order of sisters, Religious of the Virgin Mary.
In the embrace of Nature
Sunshine gives way to fog and rain. Nearing Soibada, we’re deep in nature with an eerie silence all around. It’s cold. Our convoy takes a break on a bridge overlooking a beautiful gorge between the mountains. Water runs over the entire rocky length of the valley. It is very beautiful, and nothing like anything I’ve seen in Timor before. I reunite with three young men, Danilo, Edito and Ignacio, whom I haven’t seen since they were students at NOSSEF, our senior high school in Railaco. They’re now in formation to become Jesuits and have almost completed four years’ training.
The three novices who were students at Railaco parish secondary school, Escola Secundaria Católica Nossa Senhora de Fátima (NOSSEF). From left to right: Edito, Danilo and Ignacio.
I walk a short distance and peer through the hanging fog and thick green forest. I feel that I’m on the verge of some magical kingdom but firstly I need to survive the muddy, rutted, potholed road up the hill without falling over the side before discovering the old Mission buildings. They surely hold many stories of ages past.
Timorese Fr Albino Ribeiro Gonçalves SJ saves me from walking the seven-kilometre pilgrimage route with the others in the rain. In a vehicle that is slip-sliding with wheels spinning in mud, we make it to the top and drive through the little township. A young man directs us down to the old Mission buildings and shows us to our quarters. I’m staying in a large corner room of one of those pioneering Portuguese Jesuits. I’m sharing with Nicaraguan-born Fr Sacha Bermudez-Goldman SJ from the Australian Province, who has been missioned to return to take up a post in Kasait, East Timor, next year.
Prior to starting out on the pilgrimage, a 7km uphill route, this group photo was taken on the bridge across the Sahen River, which rises in the central mountains of Timor-Leste. The novices and ISJB students were accompanied by Fr Joseph Phuong, the Suai parish priest (extreme left), Fr Albino Gonçalves (seated), and Fr Sacha Bermudez-Goldman SJ (fourth from right). The author is in the green shirt, standing sixth from left).
Get me to the church on time
Here, all the walls in the old Jesuit Residence are lined with timber. Windows on two sides open out with views across the valley to the mountain on the other side. The chapel of the Virgin Mary on the top is visible through the clouds. A special Thanksgiving Mass is to be celebrated up there in an hour or so, but no cars are permitted over the road. Hmmmmm. But I do love a challenge. I manage to walk up two sides of the mountain but can’t quite muster the puff to climb endless flights of steps to reach the chapel at the very top. Fortunately, one of the Timorese helpers collars a local boy on a motorbike and directs me to the pillion seat. Slipping and sliding along the muddy tracks and veering over the slippery grass median strip, I hang on for grim death, but make it to the church safely – and on time.
The original Mission building in the background will make way for a new Jesuit residence. In front of the building (from left to right) are Cesar Geronimo Villanueva, Regenerative Development Officer of the East Timor region; Sr Anita, SPC, House Mother of the NOSSEF Girls’ Dormitory; Michael Musgrave; and Fr Martin Bong SJ.
I am very surprised when Fr Albino introduces me to one of the special guests before the Thanksgiving Mass at the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin – Manuel Wong is a former government minister, but more significantly, he is a descendant of the family that gave the land that later became the site of the Mission to the Jesuits 125 years ago.
The spirit of the NOSSEF group
In all the activities over the two days of pilgrimage to Soibada, I feel that our Railaco parish secondary school, Escola Secundaria Católica Nossa Senhora de Fátima (NOSSEF) is the stand-out group in attendance. Even though it’s in the middle of the school vacations, all 400 Nossef students and teachers arrive after a six-hour journey in the back of open trucks, followed by a two-hour pilgrimage walking up the muddy mountain track in rain. I meet the first of the arrivals, exhausted but still smiling, and my heart swells with pride.
For me, there’s more than a sense of personal gratitude in seeing kids from simple backgrounds graduate from NOSSEF. What started out as a two-room classroom and a few students in Railaco twenty years ago is now a school that successfully educates rural students, forming them to be men and women for others. These students are formed in Ignatian values, ready to make the world a better place.
It was rewarding to have some of these NOSSEF students coming up to me, remembering me from previous visits, but even more satisfying to have beaming staff members wanting to say hello. The teachers, in particular, acknowledge what St Canice’s Parish has been doing for the past 20 years. In that time, so many St Canice’s parishioners have responded to our appeals to support NOSSEF, the mobile medical clinic, and the children’s feeding program in Railaco parish. More than $1.1 million has been raised and entrusted to our friends, Jesuit Mission Australia, who issue an official tax-deductible receipt and ensure the money goes straight to the Jesuit Railaco Mission.
After my latest Timor-Leste immersion, I think I understand the challenges of the Jesuits in the East Timor Region a little better. Deepening the faith and guiding the Timorese people to embrace their identity with pride is high on their list, and then there’s the unenviable task of balancing horizons and realities with the available Jesuit capacity.
For more information or to donate to St Canice’s Railaco Appeal
Banner image by Michael Musgrave.