Pope Francis on Monday called for action on abuse of young people on a visit to East Timor, the Catholic-majority nation which has been rocked by child sex abuse cases involving its clergy in recent years.
The 87-year-old pontiff landed in the capital Dili on Monday for the third stop of a 12-day visit of the Asia-Pacific region that has included stops in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and will conclude in Singapore.
‘We are all called to do everything possible to prevent every kind of abuse and guarantee a healthy and peaceful childhood for all young people,’ he said in a speech.
The pope did not mention a specific case or acknowledge any Vatican responsibility.
Advocacy groups had called for Francis to speak out on the issue and he has previously met victims on trips to Ireland and Portugal, but his official schedule for this trip included no such events.
Cases in East Timor include that of Nobel-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, who the Vatican secretly punished over allegations he sexually abused young children for decades.
In another case in the country, defrocked American priest Richard Daschbach was found guilty in 2021 of abusing orphaned, disadvantaged girls and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In his speech on Monday, Francis also hailed East Timor’s new era of ‘peace and freedom’, two decades after it achieved independence from neighbouring Indonesia.
The nation emerged from a brutal Indonesian occupation that left more than 2,00,000 Timorese dead, becoming formally independent in 2002.
