By: Dionísio Babo Soares
There are moments in the history of civilisations when a millennial institution pauses, looks at itself with honesty, and decides to renew. For the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council was one such moment of institutional courage. For Timor-Leste, it was equally — I take the liberty of affirming — a moment that helped shape our identity as a people and as a nation.
I write this article as a Timorese who knows the history of his country and the circumstances that brought us here at close quarters. I do not write as a theologian, but as someone who, over the course of decades, has observed the irreplaceable role the Church has played in the cultural, moral and political survival of Timor-Leste — and who recognises in it one of the silent wellsprings of our collective resilience.
Convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and concluded by Pope Paul VI in 1965, the Second Vatican Council was not, in its essence, an exercise of institutional power. It was, above all, an act of listening — an attempt by the Church to acknowledge that the world was changing rapidly and that the message of the Gospel needed to be proclaimed in language that was living, intelligible and close to the people.
The concept that John XXIII chose to describe this impulse — aggiornamento, that is, renewal — possesses a disarming clarity. It was not a matter of abandoning Tradition, but of allowing it to breathe anew in the time of men. This distinction is fundamental and, in my view, frequently underestimated: to renew is not to betray; to renew is, very often, the most faithful way to preserve.
As a diplomat, this lesson resonates with me with particular force. Modern diplomacy faces, in truth, the very same challenge: how to uphold the integrity of a State’s founding principles whilst adapting its methods and language to a world in constant flux. The Second Vatican Council offered the Church a response that continues to be, in many respects, exemplary — and one that finds a parallel in the diplomatic practice of any State that aspires to remain faithful to its values without becoming hostage to the past.
The presence of the Church in Timor-Leste is not a peripheral element of our history. It is, to a large extent, constitutive of that very history. For centuries, the Christian faith accompanied the life of the Timorese people — their rituals, their communities, their vision of the world — taking root gradually yet deeply in the social and cultural fabric of the country.
And when the darkest years of our contemporary history arrived — the Indonesian invasion of 1975 and the decades of occupation that followed — it was precisely this faith that many Timorese found as an anchor of resistance. The Church became, during that period, not merely a place of worship, but the only relatively protected space where Timorese identity could be preserved and transmitted. This role did not result from a deliberate political strategy, but from a deeper pastoral vocation — the same one that led the Church to walk alongside the people at the very moments when all other institutions had been suppressed.
The Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), the first document approved by the Second Vatican Council, represented a historic turning point in the way the Church relates to its faithful. By authorising and encouraging a broader use of national languages in the liturgy — as a complement to Latin — the Council sought to promote a more active and conscious participation of believers in celebrations. Responsibility for translation and implementation was entrusted to national episcopal conferences, under the supervision of the Holy See, in recognition of the fact that faith is lived and transmitted more authentically when it speaks the language of the people’s hearts.
In Timor-Leste, this transition assumed a historical singularity that deserves to be underscored. Before the Indonesian invasion of 1975, the Timorese Church maintained the practice of using Portuguese as the language of preaching and catechesis. The decisive moment came between 1981 and 1983, when the Indonesian prohibition on the use of Portuguese at Mass forced a choice of enormous consequence: rather than yielding to the imposition of Bahasa Indonesia, the Diocese of Dili — which reported directly to Rome, and not to the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference — chose Tetum as its liturgical language. The prayers, the hymns and the sacred gestures began to speak to the soul of the Timorese people. This was not a liturgical detail without consequence: it was an act of affirmation that Timorese identity — our language, our culture, our memory — had a place in the sacred space of faith.
The Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium described the Church as the People of God — a community on a journey, in which all the baptised share the same dignity and vocation. This ecclesiological vision had, in Timor-Leste, practical consequences of enormous reach.
During the years of the Indonesian occupation, when the State was suppressed as a sovereign institution and the voice of the Timorese people was systematically silenced, it was the catechists, the teachers and the community leaders — the laity — who ensured the continuity of faith and human dignity in the communities. Where priests were absent, the laity were present. Where institutions had failed, the community endured. The conciliar teaching on the role of the laity in the mission of the Church was not, in Timor-Leste, a theological abstraction: it was a lived reality, often under conditions of grave personal risk — a daily expression of courage, service and belonging.
The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (1965) articulated with unequivocal clarity the principle that “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” For the Timorese, these words do not constitute conciliar rhetoric: they are the recognition of a lived experience. The Church was called not to contemplate human suffering from a distance, but to inhabit it. And in Timor-Leste, this vocation was fulfilled with an intensity that few peoples have known so directly.
The same Constitution invited the Church to “read the signs of the times” — to recognise the profound questions that each generation poses and to answer them in the light of the Gospel. In Timor-Leste, those signs were, for decades, unmistakable: a people struggling for their dignity, for the preservation of their language and culture, and for their inalienable right to self-determination. The Church knew how to interpret those signs. It defended human rights when they were systematically violated. It accompanied the bereaved families, the displaced, those who lived under the burden of fear. And in doing so, it did not act as an institution detached from history — it acted as a community incarnate in a concrete people, with a concrete history.
Today, in a sovereign Timor-Leste engaged in the process of democratic consolidation, the challenges have changed in form but not in substance: social justice, human development and the building of a lasting peace continue to demand from the Church — and from all of us — the same disposition that Gaudium et Spes articulated more than sixty years ago.
Any reflection on this period would be incomplete without evoking the role of the Timorese Church’s pastoral leadership during the most difficult years of the occupation. The persistent presence of eminent figures from the Diocese of Dili alongside the most vulnerable, their willingness to give voice to those who had none, constitute one of the most significant chapters of our recent history.
The international recognition of this commitment — notably through the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 — confirmed what the Timorese people already knew: that faith lived with authenticity is not exercised on the margins of history, but within it, with all its demands and risks. This collective witness is, in my view, the most concrete expression of the spirit of the Second Vatican Council on Timorese soil — a Church that does not close in upon itself, but that embraces the destiny of its people as an integral part of its own mission.
The Second Vatican Council also opened a new path in the Church’s relationship with other religious and spiritual traditions of humanity. The Declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) affirmed, with historic clarity, that the Church “rejects nothing that is true and holy” in other religions, calling for mutual respect, sincere dialogue and collaboration among peoples.
For Timor-Leste, situated at the heart of a region of remarkable religious diversity — where Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Catholicism coexist in close geographical proximity — this spirit of openness does not constitute a philosophical abstraction. It is a practical condition for peaceful coexistence and regional stability. The Christian faith that has shaped Timorese identity over centuries does not grow in opposition to other spiritual traditions; it grows in the capacity to recognise the dignity of every human being and every culture.
This spirit of dialogue finds its juridical and constitutional counterpart in the recognition of religious freedom as a fundamental right of human conscience, as enshrined in the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae — another of the founding texts of the Second Vatican Council.
The Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste fully embraces these principles: Article 12 recognises and respects the various religious denominations, which are free in their organisation and in the exercise of their activities; Article 45 guarantees to every person freedom of conscience, religion and worship, expressly prohibiting persecution or discrimination on religious grounds. Authentic faith, as Dignitatis Humanae recalled with rigour, can only be born of freedom — never of coercion. That Timor-Leste, a people who knew so directly what it means to be deprived of that freedom, should have inscribed these principles at the heart of its constitutional order is one of the most significant and deeply meaningful acts of our history as a sovereign nation.
In a region where inter-religious tensions sometimes constitute a factor of political and social instability, the Timorese example of respectful coexistence among diverse traditions is a strategic asset that deserves to be cultivated, deepened and projected. The spirit of the Second Vatican Council — the recognition that God’s truth is not confined to narrow borders and that human dignity precedes any religious divide — offers, in this context, a framework of enduring value. Religious freedom and the dignity of the human person are not merely the foundations of our internal democratic order; they are also principles that Timor-Leste can, with historical and moral legitimacy, affirm and promote at the regional and international level.
More than sixty years since the close of the Second Vatican Council, its teachings continue to challenge us with a relevance that frequently surprises. In a world increasingly marked by polarisation, geopolitical uncertainty and unprecedented technological and social transformations, the Council’s central lesson retains all its pertinence: institutions — religious, political, diplomatic — do not exist to close in upon themselves. They exist to accompany humanity on its journey, to recognise its deepest questions and to respond to them with discernment, courage and a sense of responsibility.
For Timor-Leste, the Second Vatican Council is not, nor has it ever been, a distant episode in the universal history of the Church. It is a constitutive part of our own narrative as a people. It contributed decisively to forging a Church that walks alongside the Nation — that shared its deepest sufferings and that continues to be, in many contexts, an irreplaceable interlocutor in the building of a more just, more cohesive and more humane society. This is a legacy that, as a Timorese, I acknowledge with gratitude and with a sense of responsibility towards future generations.
Perhaps this is, in the final analysis, the most honest measure of any great Council’s legacy: not the number of documents it produced, nor the complexity of the theological formulas it crafted, but the quality of the presence it inspired — in the field, in the communities, in the concrete lives of people. In this sense, the Second Vatican Council continues, in Timor-Leste, to bear its fruit. And for as long as it does, it will continue to deserve to be read, interpreted and lived with the seriousness and hope that its inspiration demands.
Note: This article is of a reflective and opinion-based nature. Comments and contributions towards its improvement are welcome.
