The Return of the Shepherds: Memory, Witness, and the Soul of a Nation

By: Dionísio Babo Soares

For many years, numerous Timorese cherished the dream of seeing the shepherds who had shared some of the most painful and decisive moments of our history return to their homeland. This longing was not simply about transferring their mortal remains. Above all, it was a moral aspiration: to return to the land of Timor the men who had served, loved and defended it, so that they might rest in the heart of the people to whom they had devoted an essential part of their lives.

The return of Bishop Jaime Garcia Goulart, Bishop José Joaquim Ribeiro and Monsignor Martinho da Costa Lopes was spoken of not only as a religious act, but also as the fulfilment of a debt of gratitude. There was also a desire to reunite Bishop Alberto Ricardo da Silva, buried at Maloa–Ailok Laran Cemetery in Dili, with his predecessors in one sacred place. Together, the four represent different stages of a single pastoral, historical and national journey.

This long-held aspiration gained renewed momentum when, in 2025, the Presidency of the Republic and the Timorese Episcopal Conference agreed to promote the repatriation of the remains of the three prelates buried in Portugal. The Government subsequently undertook to provide the necessary institutional, financial and logistical support, in coordination with the Church and the Portuguese authorities. The process thus became a shared responsibility of the State, the Church and the people.

This cooperation reflects an undeniable reality: the history of Timor-Leste is also a history of faith, spiritual resistance and communion between a people and their shepherds. The legacy of these men extends far beyond the strictly religious sphere. It is embedded in education, the protection of communities, the defence of human dignity, the preservation of Timorese identity and the formation of our national consciousness.

For many Timorese, these shepherds were never distant figures confined to the archives of ecclesiastical history. They remained alive in the memories of families who found refuge in the missions, children educated in Catholic schools, seminarians who received their formation, communities that listened to their homilies, and those who found protection, hope, and courage within the Church.

The desire to bring them home arose from this profound bond. It was the desire to return to Timorese soil those who, through their service, closeness and witness, had already become part of the Timorese soul.

Their return therefore fulfils an aspiration long preserved in the hearts of our people. It is not simply a matter of returning the dead to the land where they served. It is about enabling the nation to recover an essential part of itself. In welcoming these shepherds, Timor-Leste recognises that its history was not written solely by political leaders, diplomats or combatants. It was also written by men and women of faith who educated, protected and consoled; who denounced injustice; and who preserved the dignity of the people when almost every other form of protection had disappeared.

Before their mortal remains are laid to rest side by side in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Dili, we should therefore remember the different paths by which these four shepherds entered the history of Timor-Leste.

Bishop Jaime Garcia Goulart came from the island of Pico in the Azores and encountered a Timor devastated by the Second World War. Appointed Apostolic Administrator in 1941 and, in 1945, the first Bishop of the newly established Diocese of Dili, he returned after the Japanese occupation to find churches, schools and missions in ruins.

Over more than two decades of episcopal leadership, he rebuilt the Church’s physical and institutional foundations. He expanded Catholic education, strengthened the formation of Timorese seminarians and helped establish institutions through which the faith could gradually take root in local society.

The Minor Seminary of Our Lady of Fatima, which he founded in 1936 and regarded as one of his most cherished achievements, would go on to educate successive generations of priests, teachers, public servants and national leaders. During his episcopate, the Catholic population grew considerably, while the number of pupils attending mission schools increased substantially.

His work belonged to the colonial period and must be understood within that era’s circumstances and contradictions. Nevertheless, some of the institutions he helped to build outlived colonialism and came to fulfil a different historical mission: preserving education, faith, memory and Timorese identity. Institutions established under one political order would eventually be embraced and transformed by the people themselves.

Bishop José Joaquim Ribeiro succeeded him in 1967 and inherited a Church standing on the threshold of catastrophe. His episcopate encompassed the final years of Portuguese administration, the political upheavals of 1974 and 1975, the internal conflict of August 1975, the invasion of 7 December and the first brutal years of foreign occupation.

He was the bishop of a transition that was anything but peaceful: not a simple transfer between governments, but the collapse of one order and the violent imposition of another. In those days, episcopal leadership could no longer be confined to sacramental and administrative responsibilities. The bishop’s residence became a sanctuary; Church compounds became places of protection; and priests and religious communities found themselves feeding the displaced, comforting bereaved families and standing between terrified civilians and armed violence. Bishop José remained in the territory for almost two years after the invasion, bearing the burden of a people trapped between war, hunger, displacement and fear.

Monsignor Martinho da Costa Lopes, the first Timorese to lead the Diocese of Dili, initially as Vicar Capitular and subsequently as Apostolic Administrator between 1977 and 1983, transformed pastoral solidarity into prophetic witness. He did not hold the episcopal title, but he fully assumed the responsibilities of a shepherd during one of the darkest periods of our history.

He visited communities, gathered testimonies, documented abuses and publicly denounced killings, disappearances, forced displacement, starvation and violence against women. His homilies challenged the machinery of silence constructed around the occupation.

He wrote to ecclesiastical authorities and carried his appeals beyond Timor because he understood that suffering hidden from the world could be repeated indefinitely and remain unpunished. He gave a voice to victims when they could not speak and pronounced truths that many were afraid to hear.

He was eventually removed from office and compelled to live in Portugal, where he died on 27 February 1991. Even in exile, he continued to defend the dignity and the right to self-determination of the Timorese people. He became known, with good reason, as the “voice of the voiceless”. His repatriation therefore represents far more than the return of a religious leader. It is the restoration to Timorese soil of one of the earliest, most courageous and clearest moral voices of our resistance.

Bishop Alberto Ricardo da Silva, born in Aileu and ordained a priest in 1972, belonged to the generation the Church Bishop Jaime helped build and the violence Bishop José and Monsignor Martinho witnessed tested. As a priest, spiritual director, seminary rector, and later Bishop of Dili from 2004 to 2015, he connected the persecuted Church of the occupation with the Church’s responsibilities in an independent nation.

His ministry was never far removed from danger. In 1991, while serving at Motael, he gave sanctuary to young people pursued because of their political activities. Sebastião Gomes, one of the young people who sought protection in the church, was killed during the events that preceded the demonstration of 12 November. Bishop Alberto celebrated the funeral Mass, after which the procession proceeded towards Santa Cruz Cemetery, becoming a peaceful demonstration that was brutally repressed.

After independence, Bishop Alberto preached reconciliation and national harmony, but never a reconciliation built upon forgetting. His episcopal motto, Servus Verbi Domini — “Servant of the Word of the Lord” — expressed the humility with which he exercised authority.

He understood that the Church which had defended human dignity during the occupation had a duty to continue defending it in freedom. The Church’s mission did not end with independence; it assumed new responsibilities amid poverty, inequality, institutional fragility, political conflict, and the need to rebuild profoundly wounded human relationships.

These four trajectories form one continuous history. Bishop Jaime built; Bishop José welcomed and protected; Monsignor Martinho raised his voice; Bishop Alberto reconciled and renewed. One strengthened the institutions of faith; another opened their doors to those in danger; another transformed the Church’s moral authority into public testimony; and the last carried that legacy into the demanding work of peace and state-building.

Their lives span the destruction of the Second World War, the final decades of colonial rule, the crisis of 1975, the long years of foreign occupation, the struggle for self-determination and the first years of restored independence. Taken together, they tell the story of how the Church in Timor gradually acquired a truly Timorese face, voice and conscience.

The Past: Sanctuary in the Storm

On the morning of 1 September 2026, I hope to stand in Dili not merely as a witness to a ceremony, but as a man encountering his own past. The arrival of the remains of Bishop Jaime Garcia Goulart, Bishop José Joaquim Ribeiro and Monsignor Martinho da Costa Lopes — and their subsequent reunion with Bishop Alberto Ricardo da Silva in the Metropolitan Cathedral — is not, for me, an abstract act of ecclesiastical or state protocol.

It is the return of spiritual fathers: men whose hands touched my childhood, whose voices echoed through my youth and whose courage helped teach me what it means to be Timorese.

This ceremony awakens in me an even more intimate memory: that of a path my own parents dreamed of for me, but which history interrupted.

My late parents, Saturnino de Jesus Soares and Joaquina da Costa Babo Soares, had both been primary-school teachers at the mission schools of Maliana and Ermera. From their experience, they understood the value of the education the Church provided and the importance of priests, religious sisters, teachers, and catechists in Timorese communities. My father had taught Bishop Alberto Ricardo da Silva and another bishop, the late Bishop Basílio do Nascimento of the Diocese of Baucau.

For my parents, the mission school was not simply a place where children learned to read, write and count. It was also a place of human formation, discipline, faith, responsibility and service to the community. At a time when educational opportunities were extremely limited, mission schools opened paths that would otherwise have remained closed to many Timorese children.

In this environment, my parents hoped I would enter the seminary and become a priest. They saw the priesthood as a noble vocation and a way to serve both God and the people. In their eyes, entering the seminary would mean continuing a tradition of education and service that they themselves had experienced as mission-school teachers.

That dream came very close to being realised. I was preparing to register at the seminary when what was then called the “civil war” broke out in August 1975. Suddenly, the path my parents had imagined for me was interrupted. Violence took over the streets; families sought refuge; and plans for the future gave way to the immediate necessity of survival.

History entered my childhood and changed our dreams.

I did not reach the seminary as my parents had hoped. Instead, I was taken with my family through a city in conflict, from Colmera to the bishop’s residence. The priestly vocation my parents had imagined for me did not materialise, but my encounter with the Church, its shepherds and its moral witness continued to shape my life profoundly.

Life led me along a different path. However, the sense of service that my parents associated with the priesthood remained with me. Perhaps the vocation did not disappear entirely; perhaps it merely assumed a different form. Public service, teaching, the defence of justice, diplomacy and commitment to Timor-Leste became other ways of responding to the calling my parents had discerned when I was still a child.

This may explain why the return of these shepherds carries such personal significance for me. They represent not only the religious and national history of Timor-Leste, but also the interrupted dreams of many Timorese families. They represent the paths closed by war, the vocations that could not flourish, the studies abandoned and the childhoods abruptly transformed by violence. However, they also show our ability to preserve a sense of mission, even when life leads us down paths different from those originally imagined.

To understand the meaning of this homecoming, we must recognise that these remains carry much of our modern history: the decline of empire, the devastation of war, the terror of invasion, the long silence imposed by occupation, the persistence of resistance and the fragile dawn of freedom. Their coffins do not bring the past home as something dead. They return it to us as a living moral inheritance.

I was nine years old when the world around me collapsed. It was 20 August 1975, and the streets of Dili had become a battlefield. I remember the ambulance — then the only one in the city — driven by the late Salvador de Jesus, carrying my family through the chaos to the residence of Bishop José Joaquim Ribeiro.

The bishop’s house was not merely a building of stone and tile. At that moment, it seemed to be one of the last places in Dili where innocence could still find shelter.

Bishop José received us with a compassion that required no explanation. Outside, political divisions were degenerating into violence and human life was becoming increasingly uncertain. Inside, the Church sought to preserve a place where frightened people would continue to be treated as human beings, rather than as enemies, political categories or mere casualties of war.

For my family, as for so many others, Bishop José transformed the Church: he turned it from an institution into a living refuge. He embodied the ancient responsibility of the shepherd — not to abandon the flock when danger approaches, but to remain among the people and share their vulnerability.

During those same troubled days, Father Martinho da Costa Lopes would gather us frightened children and tell us stories. He was physically imposing and possessed a natural authority, yet he spoke with gentleness and serenity. He told us about earlier wars, taught us the doctrines of the Church and warned us about the dangers surrounding us.

In his words, faith and prudence walked side by side. Perhaps he understood that children could not be completely sheltered from history, but they could be given the moral language with which one day to understand it.

He was preparing us not only to survive, but also to remember.

After the invasion of 7 December 1975, the sanctuary itself became a witness. As an altar boy in Lecidere and Motael, I stood before Father Martinho — later Monsignor Lopes — and heard the language of pastoral care become the language of moral resistance.

He named what others were afraid, or forbidden, to name: disappearances, killings, starvation, the destruction of families, forced unions and marriages, violence against women and abuses committed against young people. He refused to reduce human suffering to statistics or to accept that political power could determine which truths were permitted to be spoken.

His homilies became dangerous because they restored names, faces and dignity to those whom the occupation sought to render invisible. In a society governed by fear, simply speaking the truth became an act of resistance. When few international observers could enter Timor, and information was tightly controlled, Church networks carried testimony from isolated communities to Dili and, whenever possible, beyond the territory’s borders. Monsignor Lopes understood that a crime concealed from the world risked becoming a crime repeated without limit.

His removal in 1983 caused profound pain among the Timorese faithful. However, exile could not erase what he had already achieved. He had broken the silence. He had demonstrated that faith separated from justice becomes an empty ritual and that the Gospel cannot remain neutral when human dignity is systematically violated. Portugal became the place of his exile and death, but Timor always remained the centre of his pastoral conscience.

Bishop Jaime Garcia Goulart had prepared the institutional ground upon which this courageous Church would stand. Interpreting his episcopate solely through the framework of colonial history would be too simplistic. His contribution was more complex and enduring.

He rebuilt a diocese devastated by war, expanded schools and missions, encouraged religious vocations and invested in the education of Timorese youth. The seminary and Catholic schools did more than transmit doctrine: they created spaces for literacy, discipline, reflection and leadership formation.

Over time, institutions created during one political era were embraced and transformed by the Timorese people. The Church ceased to be perceived merely as an external presence and became increasingly rooted in local languages, culture and community life. During the occupation, when Portuguese was restricted and traditional institutions were under pressure, the Church offered a protected space where memory and identity could survive. The seed planted during Bishop Jaime’s episcopate thus bore fruit in circumstances he could scarcely have foreseen.

Bishop Alberto Ricardo da Silva embodied that fruit. Like Monsignor Lopes, he was a son of Timor. His life demonstrated that the Timorisation of the Church was not simply a matter of appointing Timorese clergy; it meant the emergence of a Church capable of understanding the suffering, aspirations and moral imagination of its own people.

At Motael in 1991, his decision to shelter young activists was entirely consistent with the tradition he had inherited. When the vulnerable were pursued, the Church’s doors were to remain open.

At the time, I was a member of the choir and of a Catholic youth organisation, and I had the opportunity to observe and accompany the pastoral work of Father Ricardo, who later became Bishop Ricardo. I assisted him during Mass, played the church’s only organ to accompany the choir and, every Sunday, accompanied him as he brought Holy Communion to the sick in hospitals and in their homes. Together with other friends, I also sometimes assisted him in his pastoral work, helping renew the Catholic spirit within families and communities.

After independence, Bishop Alberto’s challenge changed. It was no longer primarily a matter of protecting a people from foreign domination, but of helping a free yet deeply wounded society live responsibly with its memories.

Bishop Alberto understood that reconciliation does not mean amnesia and that forgiveness does not require falsifying history. Authentic reconciliation begins with truth, acknowledges suffering and seeks to prevent its repetition. His ministry therefore became a bridge between resistance and reconstruction, between the moral courage required to confront injustice and the patience necessary to rebuild a nation.

The Present: A Reunion of Body and Spirit

In 2026, these four shepherds will finally rest together beneath the vaults of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Dili. Bishop Jaime Garcia Goulart, Bishop José Joaquim Ribeiro and Monsignor Martinho da Costa Lopes return from Portugal; Bishop Alberto Ricardo da Silva will be transferred from Maloa–Ailok Laran Cemetery.

The ceremonies held in Évora honoured the three prelates before their departure. Their remains are due to arrive in Dili on 1 September 2026, when the Church, the State and the population will solemnly receive them. The national commemoration at Tasi Tolu and the funeral at Dili Cathedral are scheduled for 10 September.

Granting official leave shows this is not a ceremony reserved for the Church hierarchy or State authorities. It is intended to allow the people to participate, accompany the procession and express their gratitude. The people, who preserved the memory of these shepherds for decades, must remain at the centre of this tribute.

The programme also includes creating permanent places of remembrance, including a monument and memorial garden dedicated to the prelates at Dili Cathedral. Naming the Manatuto Bridge after Monsignor Martinho da Costa Lopes and constructing a monument in Mehara, Tutuala, further demonstrate the intention to preserve his legacy for future generations.

The symbolism is inescapable. This is not nostalgia; it is an act of national completion.

For too long, our history remained scattered: bodies buried in foreign lands, families divided across countries, memories fractured by trauma, documents dispersed and national narratives shaped by those who possessed greater power.

Bringing these shepherds home constitutes a form of spiritual restitution. It restores them to the community to which their lives became permanently bound.

We must, however, speak accurately about what we are honouring. The Church was not a single, unchanging institution, nor was every moment of its history free from contradiction. Its transformation was gradual. It moved from a predominantly missionary structure tied to Portuguese administration to a more local Church that increasingly identified itself with the suffering and aspirations of the Timorese people.

That transformation was made possible by priests, religious sisters, catechists, teachers and laypeople who remained in the villages, sheltered families, educated children, documented violations and buried the dead. The four shepherds symbolise this history, but they did not make it alone.

To reunite them in Dili is therefore also to honour the wider human community around them: the priests who carried messages between isolated populations; the religious sisters who cared for the wounded and hungry; the catechists who sustained the faith in the most remote villages; the mission teachers who educated generations of children; the families who sought safety in Church compounds; and the young people who transformed religious processions into expressions of national dignity.

Timor-Leste did not achieve independence through politics or armed resistance alone. Our survival also depended upon preserving a moral community.

When public speech was controlled, the liturgy gave the people a common language. When communities were displaced, parishes offered continuity. When political organisations were suppressed, the Church provided spaces where the Timorese could still gather. When the world doubted or ignored our suffering, religious voices helped carry our testimony beyond the borders imposed upon us.

The transfer of Bishop Alberto’s remains from Maloa is particularly moving because he represents the bridge between the Church of resistance and the Church of the sovereign nation. Placing him beside his predecessors means recognising that independence did not divide history into disconnected periods.

National reconstruction was made possible, in part, by those who defended human dignity before freedom arrived. The democratic institutions created after 1999 also rest upon the sacrifices of those who preserved our collective conscience during the years when the ballot box, freedom of expression and political participation were denied to our people.

The Future: What the Dead Ask of the Living

However, what does this homecoming mean for tomorrow?

If the past was sanctuary and the present is reunion, the future must be responsibility. These men did not serve so that their graves could become monuments to complacency. Their tombs should not merely preserve their names; they should unsettle our conscience.

Monsignor Lopes risked his position and security to denounce injustice. Bishop José opened his doors when hatred and violence dominated the streets. Bishop Jaime invested in education and formation because he understood that institutions endure only when people are prepared to sustain them. Bishop Alberto taught that reconciliation neither erases memory nor excuses evasion of accountability.

Together, they compel us to ask whether the Timor-Leste we are building is worthy of the suffering through which we achieved our freedom.

We cannot honour them with incense, flowers and hymns while remaining indifferent to the vulnerable. We cannot celebrate the courage demonstrated during the occupation while tolerating injustice within our own free society.

We cannot praise the Church for sheltering the displaced in 1975 while ignoring families who today remain without adequate housing, education, healthcare or protection. Nor can we invoke the prophetic voice of Monsignor Lopes while expecting contemporary religious and civic leaders to remain silent in the face of corruption, violence, inequality or abuse of authority.

The legacy of these shepherds must be reflected in our governance. Public office must be understood as service, not as privilege or entitlement. Power must protect rather than intimidate. Institutions of justice must be accessible to the poor, and not only to the powerful. Education must form not merely skilled workers, but citizens capable of ethical judgement.

Reconciliation must never become an argument for impunity, and memory must never be manipulated to divide a new generation.

The witness of these men also requires something of the Church itself. In an independent Timor-Leste, the Church’s moral authority cannot rest exclusively upon its heroic past. That authority must be continually renewed through humility, transparency, service and closeness to those who live on the margins of society.

The Church must remain a home for the poor, a defender of women and children, a companion to young people and a voice for all those whose dignity is threatened. Its mission is not to replace the State, but to awaken the conscience of society — including the conscience of the State itself.

For the children who will one day visit the Cathedral — and I hope they come by the thousands — the four tombs must represent far more than marble, dates and inscriptions. They must become a catechism carved in stone.

They must teach that Timor-Leste did not suddenly come into existence in 2002. The nation was formed through the accumulated witness of ordinary and extraordinary people who refused to allow the human spirit to be extinguished.

The nation lived in clandestine messages, whispered prayers, mountain encampments, prison cells, diplomatic appeals, parish schools and sanctuaries filled with frightened families. Parents preserved it by teaching their children who they were; teachers kept the door to knowledge open; priests recorded what they witnessed; and young people walked toward Santa Cruz knowing they might not return.

The tombs must also teach that our Catholic heritage is not merely a relic of the past or a demographic identity. It is an enduring covenant between faith and human dignity.

For that heritage to remain meaningful, it must be expressed through compassion, honesty, justice, solidarity and service. A Christian nation is not defined solely by the number of its churches or the size of its processions, but by how it treats the poor, the foreigner, the prisoner, the child, the widow, the person with a disability and all those who possess little power.

The Unity of One Sacred Place

When the remains are finally laid to rest, I will not see four separate deaths. I will see one continuous life: the life of a Church that gradually learned to stand ever more closely beside its people.

Bishop Jaime Garcia Goulart represents reconstruction after devastation and the establishment of institutions that outlived the colonial world in which they originated. Bishop José Joaquim Ribeiro represents sanctuary during the collapse of public order and the first manifestations of violence under the occupation. Monsignor Martinho da Costa Lopes represents the moment when pastoral compassion became fearless public testimony. Bishop Alberto Ricardo da Silva represents the passage from resistance to reconciliation, and from national liberation to the ethical responsibilities of independence.

Their origins were different. Two came from Portugal; two were sons of Timor. Three exercised episcopal ministry or held the title of bishop; Monsignor Lopes led the Diocese as Apostolic Administrator without having been consecrated a bishop. However, all four became shepherds of the same people.

Their differences do not divide this history; they reveal its development: from a missionary Church to an increasingly Timorese Church; from institution to sanctuary; from sanctuary to witness; and from witness to reconciliation.

To bury them together in the Metropolitan Cathedral is to affirm that the different chapters of our history belong to one national memory. We should not romanticise that history, but neither should we allow its complexities to obscure the good that was accomplished. We should receive it in its entirety: with gratitude, discernment and responsibility.

On 1 September, I hope to be present to welcome those who are returning. On the day of their final burial, I will also remember the frightened nine-year-old boy who entered Bishop José Ribeiro’s residence in an ambulance driven through a city at war.

I will remember my late parents, Saturnino de Jesus Soares and Joaquina da Costa Babo Soares, teachers at the mission primary schools of Maliana and Ermera, and the dream they cherished of seeing me enter the seminary and become a priest. I will remember the moment when the violence of August 1975 interrupted that dream and changed the course of our lives.

I will remember Father Martinho Lopes telling stories to children who could not yet understand the historical storm surrounding them. I will remember the altars of Lecidere and Motael, the homilies that broke the imposed silence, the doors opened to the persecuted, and the faith that gave an endangered people the strength to believe that history had not ended.

The shepherds are returning to us. However, their homecoming also calls upon us to return: to memory without hatred, faith without indifference, authority without arrogance, and freedom joined with responsibility.

They are home. Moreover, through their homecoming, they call us home as well: to the deepest truths of our history, to the better angels of our national character, and to the unfinished task of building a Timor-Leste worthy of their witness.

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*This is a personal reflection based upon lived experience and narrated for educational purposes. The family memories are part of the author’s personal testimony. The biographical and ecclesiastical information, as well as the details of the repatriation programme, have been checked against information provided by the Presidency of the Republic, the Government of Timor-Leste and the Timorese Episcopal Conference, together with available historical records. They remain subject to correction in light of authoritative official sources or more complete documentary evidence.