Books A bishop who weeps, scolds and keeps faith
FROM THE PLACE OF THE
DEAD By Arnold S. Kohen St. Martins Press, 270 pages,
$27.95 To order: 1-800-221-7945 |
By DENNIS CODAY
In From the Place of the Dead, Arnold Kohen presents a
biography of Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of East Timor that explores
three levels: the man, the priest and the patriot. It shows the mans life
is as intricately woven as the tai (indigenous multi-colored textiles)
that grace his liturgical vestments.
The patriot is Belos most public self. Though Belo insists
that he is a bishop and not a politician in clerical garb, it was as a patriot
and the independent spokesperson for his people that he received a Nobel Prize
for Peace in 1996. Much of the book tells the story of East Timors
struggle against Indonesian occupiers. It would have to. East Timors
story is the story of Bishop Belo and vice versa.
Opposing foreign occupiers is also part of Belos family
history. More than once during World War II, Japanese soldiers severely beat
Belos father when he tried to stop them from raping East Timorese women.
The author contends that such abuse contributed to his fathers death in
1951 at age 39. Carlos was 3 then, and his mother had six children to
raise.
The book does a good job of telling the story of Belo the priest.
His day-to-day job is running his diocese. Belo introduced Tetum, the local
language, into the churchs liturgies. He celebrated Mass daily in his
Dili cathedral and made extensive pastoral visits throughout the
countryside.
The book treats with respect Belos spirituality and the East
Timorese traditional spirituality that permeates it. (The books title
comes from the name of Belos birthplace, Mount Matebian, which translates
as the place of the dead. Timorese tradition holds that the souls
gather after death on Mount Matebian. Shortly after his birth and before his
Catholic baptism, Belo was washed in waters from the sacred mountain.)
Generally, the secular world too easily dismisses this aspect, but
Kohens book shows how Belos priesthood is his underlying motivation
for all his actions. It shows how prayer and meditation give Belo the
foundation for his activism.
Belo is not just a priest; he is a Salesian, a member of a
religious order founded by Italian St. John Bosco in the late 1800s to work
among troubled and abandoned youth. The bishop has often said that all he ever
wanted to do was work with young people. His 12 years of seminary training (six
years in Portugal) prepared him for this.
His dedication to young people led him to make one of his most
fateful decisions. On Feb. 6, 1989, his sixth year as head of the Dili diocese,
a boy came to the bishops house in tears. He told the bishop that
Indonesian teachers at his school had humiliated him and his friends because
they were Timorese. In that boy, Belo saw an entire generation marginalized and
an entire culture suppressed. That day, he wrote a letter to then-U.N.
Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, asking the United Nations to conduct
a referendum for the people of East Timor on the future of their land.
This simple letter, motivated by Belos religious calling to
serve youth, was nearly Belos undoing. (Perez de Cuellar, by the way,
never responded). The letter, Kohen writes, brought on an unrelenting
campaign of intimidation and death threats. At this same time, Belo waged
a clandestine battle with Vatican bureaucrats who, under siege by Indonesian
power brokers, wanted Belo replaced.
According to Kohen, Belo had the ear and the sympathy of Pope John
Paul II, but not the Vatican diplomatic bureaucracy. Kohen -- among others --
draws parallels between Belo and Archbishop Oscar Romero: Both were appointed
with the expectation that they would maintain cozy relations with difficult
governments, and neither met this expectation.
Following his ad limina visit in 1990, Belo was told to
wait for a summons from the Vatican secretariat of state. He cooled his heels
in the Vatican for two weeks before in exasperation he telephoned the
secretariat. Finally the summons came, but after waiting more than two hours
outside the office, he was told he would have to come back the next day. Kohen
says Belo left in disgust and never went back.
East Timor posed an extremely difficult position for Rome,
one with considerations well beyond the issue at hand, Kohen writes.
To some in the Vatican, on a religious level at least, Indonesia was as
strategically significant as the military and economic importance of its
sea-lanes and oil reserves.
The strategic importance includes: Indonesias role in
inter-religious dialogue (Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the
world), relative freedom for Catholic evangelism and generous assistance to
Catholic schools and hospitals. Catholics also held prominent positions in
Indonesias government, military and business sectors. In short, Kohen
writes, important voices in the Vatican wanted to downplay the issue of
East Timor.
The author, a former investigative reporter for NBC News, is
president of The Humanitarian Project, which he says aims to stimulate
greater public awareness of human rights and humanitarian problems that face
needy areas of the world, and to encourage aid to these areas. The group
has an East Timor project, and it was in this context that Kohen met Belo. The
authors preface notes that while he had extensive cooperation from Belo,
this is not an authorized biography.
Kohen was with Belo when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Kohen
has traveled with the bishop through Europe and the United States, and has had
extended visits with the bishop in East Timor. Together they climbed Mount
Ramelau, another sacred peak, during a pilgrimage that attracted thousands of
Timorese.
Concise and readable, the book is a good introduction to East
Timor. Best of all, the book presents Bishop Belo as a man: one who weeps and
rages, scolds and consoles, a man peaceful in prayer, but worried about a
middle-age paunch.
I found myself awed at Belos resilience. Though under
constant surveillance and hounded by petitioners and the media, for much of his
adult life Belo has been an isolated man. The Indonesians have always been
leery and generally hostile to him. Though now he is popular with his people,
the guerrilla movement never trusted him. In May 1983, the night before he was
installed as apostolic administrator, the priests of the diocese rejected his
appointment and announced they would boycott the installation.
But Belo endured. And he led. Whatever the results of the
referendum held at the end of August, East Timor is acknowledged to be on the
verge of statehood. Though it took a 25-year-long international campaign to
secure the referendum, it is to a large extent Belos leadership that made
the referendum possible.
East Timor owes its future to Bishop Belo.
Dennis Coday writes from Bangkok, Thailand. He reports on Asian
issues for NCR.
National Catholic Reporter, September 10,
1999
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