Pope Francis's seaside mass in East Timor attracts thousands in huge crowds

Tens of thousands of Catholic worshippers gathered on Tuesday to hear Pope Francis preach in East Timor.

The mass at Tacitolu Park is the same site where Pope John Paul II celebrated a historic liturgy during the nation’s fight for independence from Indonesia in 1989, which highlighted Indonesia’s human rights abuses.

As many as 200,000 people were killed in a quarter of a century during the struggle for independence.

Pope Francis’s visit comes more than two decades after the Southeast Asian nation finally became an independent state in 2002.

Thousands of faithful in the overwhelmingly Catholic country have turned out in droves to welcome the first pope to visit them as an independent nation, thronging the motorcade route as Pope Francis arrived on Monday.

They lined up before dawn by the tens of thousands to enter the Tacitolu park, on the coast nearly 5 miles from the capital Dili.

With hours to go until the service, the roads leading to it were jammed by cars, trucks and buses packed with people.

Government authorities said some 300,000 people had registered through their dioceses to attend the mass, but President Jose Ramos-Horta said he expected 700,000 and the Vatican predicted as many as 750,000.

"For us, the pope is a reflection of the Lord Jesus, as a shepherd who wants to see his sheep, so we come to him with all our hearts as our worship," said Alfonso de Jesus, who came from Baucau, the country's second-largest city after Dili, about 75 miles east of the capital.

Mr de Jesus, 56, was among the estimated 100,000 people who attended John Paul's 1989 Mass, which made headlines around the world because of a riot that broke out just as it was ending.

John Paul looked on as baton-wielding Indonesian plain-clothed police clashed with around 20 young men who shouted "Viva a independencia" and "Viva el Papa!".

Four women were reported hospitalised with injuries suffered after being crushed in the surging crowd. The pope was not harmed.

"The mass was run very neat and orderly with very tight security," Mr De Jesus told the Associated Press more than three decades later.

"But it was crushed by a brief riot at the end of the event."

East Timor, known also as Timor-Leste, remains one of the poorest countries, with 42% of its 1.3 million people living below the poverty line, according to the UN Development Programme.

The territory has been overwhelmingly Catholic ever since Portuguese explorers first arrived in the early 1500s and 97% of the population today is Catholic.

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