Timor and Sumba

chapter 9 Timor and Sumba The three islands of Flores, Timor and Sumba are the largest regions of the Indonesian province of the South-eastern Islands (ntt, Nusa Tenggara Timur). There are some smaller islands where a similar culture is found, but they are related to these three big islands. The capital of the Indonesian province is Kupang on the largest island, Timor. Two districts here (Belu and North Central Timor) are majority Catholic, while in the other regions of Indonesian Timor a Protestant majority is quite dominant. Sumba has also a Protestant majority with a quite strong Catholic minority in the western region. The diocese of Atambua in Indonesian Timor has claimed for three decades the highest percentage of Catholics in the country. Not less than 93.5% or 389,364 out of a population of 416,039 in 2000.1 This quite spectacular percentage is a development from 47,973 in 1940 or 29.3% out of some 140,000.2 It was steady growth, that only knew a quick increase in the period 1966–70 when people wanted to have a written proof of baptism in order to show that they were members of a recognised religion and not Communists. But, seen from the dominant position of the Catholic Church in the regencies or districts of Belu (capital Atambua) and North-Central Timor (capital Kefamenanu), espe- cially through its network of schools in the last decades of the colonial period (and virtually a monopoly until the early 1970s), one should rather speak of a consolidation of its influence. Catholicism had started from the eastern section of the island, since the arrival of the Portuguese in 1556, with Dili as a major centre, while the harbour of Atapupu and the eastern town of Halilulik hosted further settlements with a long tradition of more or less Catholic rulers. In the eighteenth century, how- ever, Protestantism started on the two islands of Sawu and Roti and in the nineteenth century the later provincial capital of Kupang became the centre for the spread of a rival tradition of Christianity. In the first half of the twenti- eth century the southern and western districts came slowly under the influence of Protestantism. Along with the pride of a strong number of Catholics in the north-eastern districts there is the feeling of being a minority in the whole 1 Rosariyanto 2001:110. 2 Boelaars 1991:75. For the general figure we have stipulated that the Indonesian population roughly tripled between 1940 and 2000 (nationally from 70 to 206 million). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285422_010 Timor and Sumba 297 of the island and the province of ntt, the South-eastern Islands. In contrast to East Flores, where the memory of the Catholic tradition has beeen strong since the mid-sixteenth century, there is little pride about this old history of the Sorani Tuwa (‘Old Christians’) as they are called in Timor. An important but quite isolated and exceptional memorial of the old established Catholicism is the deep and spacious cave of Bitaoni, near Kefamenanu. According to the first reports of visiting missionaries in 1913 the basic rituals here were, like those in East Flores around Good Friday and Easter, but in the 1930s a new use of the cave concentrated on the devotion to Mary with 15 August, Mary’s Ascension, as the yearly summit and this has remained so since then.3 Besides the renewed use of the cave of Bitaoni there are no visible remnants of the long lasting but rather weak Catholic tradition in this remote region of Timor. This modest position is even stronger when we put Atambua in the perspec- tive of the whole of the Catholic population of the province of ntt where Flores is their dominant island. In the period 1946–1949 the State of East Indonesia (Negera Indonesia Timur) with its capital in Makassar was the only somewhat flourishing state of the federal Indonesia desired by the Dutch government. From Flores the Catholic community sent three representatives, Dr Jan Raats svd, Adrianus Conterius and Louis E. Monteiro, while the Catholics of Timor were represented by svd priest Gabriel Manek, then working in Flores and later bishop of Larantuka and Ende.4 Catholic identity became a very sensitive issue again in the period of Indonesian rule in East Timor, 1975– 1999. The referendum of 1999 that ended this rule has been denounced by (some, Muslim) opponents as a Christian attack on the unity of Indonesia. The crumbling or Balkanisation of the eastern part of the country, should be seen as part of the agenda of the Catholics and Protestants of Timor, to be followed by similar separations of Papua and the Moluccas. Below we will describe the slow but certain consolidation, and growing cohesion of the Catholic presence and the challenges of the other mostly Protestant regencies of Timor. Institutional Consolidation of Pre- and Post-Vatican Catholicism in Atambua and Kupang The situation of the Catholic foreign leadership during the Japanese rule was quite different from that in Flores where not only some priests, seminary teach- ers, quite a few nuns/nurses, and the Apostolic Vicar and his secretary could 3 Schulte Nordholt 2006. Steenbrink 2007:164–165. 4 John Prior in Aritonang and Steenbrink (eds), 2008:251..

Load more