I belong to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish in Randwick—a community that has shaped much of my life.
It’s where I once served as an acolyte, where my wife and I were married, and where our children were baptised. A few months ago, our parish priest, Fr Pat Mara MSC, invited me to lend a hand in supporting the parish’s fundraising for our sister parish, São Paulo, in Lospalos, a small town in the far east of Timor Leste.
I hadn’t realised we had a sister parish, but years ago a number of Sydney parishes had been twinned with Timorese counterparts. Among other things, Sao Paulo parish runs an orphanage for 65 boys aged ten to 18 and supports 19 chapels in neighbouring villages.
I had never expected to visit Timor-Leste, a country I knew little about. But providence called me there. My companion for the journey was the modest and attentive Fr Michael Stephen MSC. Our host in Lospalos was the ever-cheerful, welcoming local Salesian priest, Fr Elias de Deus SDB.
East Timor gained independence in 2002 after centuries of Portuguese rule and a bloody struggle against Indonesian occupation. Today, according to the World Bank, 42 per cent of Timorese live in poverty. And 47 per cent of children are stunted.
Sao Paulo is located at the eastern end of Timor-Leste, run by the Salesians, an order of priests and nuns established by Don Bosco in Italy in 1859. The Salesians have been in East Timor since 1927.
In Dili I met an energetic 80-year-old Filipino Salesian priest who had come to Timor in 1983 on mission and never left. He had only recently completed a translation of the Bible into Tetum, the most widely-spoken language in Timor.
Over breakfast one morning he explained how the spirituality of the Salesians is based on joy… and sports.
“Sports?” I queried.
“Sports is how you connect with young people. We are an active ministry. It is our form of prayer,” he replied assuredly.
The six-hour drive from Dili to Lospalos took us down a windy road through hills and along the coast. Beyond Baucau, Timor’s second largest city, the roads turn brutal.
“Lospalos is beautiful, but no one will come here while the roads are like this,” noted Fr Elias as he ploughed determinedly through the potholes.
“A good massage for your back, yes?” he laughed as we were tossed around the back seat.
We arrived late Saturday night, but the 60 boys were up waiting. They greeted us with a prepared speech and song. Music, we would find, is constant in the orphanage. The boys grinned widely and looked at us curiously.
On Sunday, I watched the boys play soccer on the field adjacent to the orphanage. Twenty on each side, most barefoot, some wearing one shoe. In the middle was 49-year-old Fr Elias, yelling encouragement and laughing.
After vespers that evening, Fr Elias asked Fr Michael and I to speak to the boys.
“Thousands of kilometres away there is a parish in Sydney that cares about you,” I told them.
“I will tell them what I have seen here—boys who study and pray and care for each other. The big boys look after the little boys, and the little boys look after each other. You are great the way you are, and I hope you never change.”
Halfway back to Dili, we stopped for lunch in Baucau. Outside the restaurant stood a girl, maybe five, and her brother, no more than three, selling three coconuts in a basket. Fifty cents each.
“What is their story?” Fr Michael asked.
Fr Elias chatted with them. “She doesn’t go to school. Her father married another woman and left them. So now they sell coconuts,” Fr Elias reported.
Fr Michael gave them $5 for their three coconuts. The children, pleased with the windfall, skipped down the road. We drove on, affected by these two siblings with nothing to their name and even poorer prospects.
“I should find their mother,” Fr Elias said quietly, his eyes on the road and his customary joviality subdued. “Perhaps the Salesian sisters can help with the girl’s schooling.”
I have to admit, meeting those siblings has stayed with me. I would never have let my children roam about the street at that age, and the disparity felt jarring. At Lospalos, the orphanage boys get three meals daily. The government provides $1.50 per day per boy for food, though it costs the parish $7 to feed each one.
$1.50 a day, which wouldn’t buy a coffee in Sydney. $1.50 which is a day’s wages for a five-year-old and a three-year-old on the streets of Baucau.
