UPDATE ON OUR EAST TIMOR PARTNERSHIP
 
Corpus Christi parish is privileged to be connected with East Timor, especially the region of Zumalai, south west of the capital, Dili, towards Suai. This connection came about through our contact with the priests of the Carmelite Religious Order who are active in the pastoral care of Zumalai, a region of seventeen villages where about 15,000 people live. The Carmelites of East Timor are part of the same ‘province’ as the Carmelites of Australia. And so, on a number of occasions now, when the Australian Carmelites brought some of the East Timorese Carmelites to Australia for dealings with the Order, we were very fortunate to receive a visit. This gave us a chance to get to know the story of the people so much more closely and to appreciate how the East Timorese, just 400km off our northern shores, have been so neglected, so abused and so traumatised. We feel we have started coming to know a forgotten people who all along were suffering unspeakably, just off the tip of Darwin! During Indonesia’s 24 year occupation and with the final huge atrocities of 1999 committed by the occupying army and supported militia, one third of East Timor’s population was killed! Finally now independent, the UN has nevertheless stated that East Timor is the poorest nation in Asia.
 
Corpus Christi has been providing some financial assistance to the Zumalai region to support the work of the Carmelite Order since 2001. Over the time we’ve been pleased to receive photos showing some of the advances, eg: a common town tap in Zumalai (the main village of the region also called Zumalai) piped 3km from a spring, a mobile poly-clinic to treat Tuberculosis, Dengue Fever, Malaria and malnutrition in a country where one in seven children born doesn’t live until five years, the re-opening of schools in the region including the school at Bulo where we have been able to have a direct influence.
 
Fr Wayne Stanhope, the leader of the Carmelite Order in the Australia/East Timor province has become a friend of our parish during several visits. During his last visit, in thanking the parish for its participation in the Caremlites’ work, Fr Wayne said: “The church takes a very practical role in developing countries and partners communities by providing much needed emotional and pastoral support, in areas like health, education, personal and spiritual development. Independence is vitally important to the East Timorese people and we are very fortunate to have local priests and religious in East Timor working with their own people. The church is not ‘doing’ for them, but rather finding ways to resource the East Timorese people and to empower them to bring about change in their own situations and a greater quality of life.”
 
A highlight of Corpus Christi’s involvement with East Timor was our first parish group visit in July of 2005. Seven of our people attended and were hosted with deep friendship by the Carmelites in Dili, Maubara, Zumalai and everywhere in between. Since then, we have been able to share many more visuals and stories with our people and those in our schools. The parish’s ‘mission support team’ was formed in 2004 and has made great contributions since to helping the coordination of our Timor outreach and involvement. A number of its members were among the inaugural parish visitors to East Timor. Since the ’05 visit, the mission support team and a sub-committee hosted the ET Spring Ball. It aimed to tap the support of the wider community, including the business community of greater Penrith. The result was stunning, in fact in excess of $30,000. Corpus Christi parish has of course a number of other fundraising and outreach projects to which it contributes many thousands of dollars each year and must commit its energies, but the Spring Ball has provided the parish with a fund to allocate for various projects in East Timor over the next couple of years. In the meantime, we can further develop the other two prongs of the mandate of our mission support team with regard to East Timor and that is: 1. sharing of story / building of mutual relationship with people of another community AND 2. education / awareness of the realities of the less privileged world.
 

(The story of Corpus Christi’s Easter magnet 2007)
Corpus Christi Parish is supporting new spiritual leaders for East Timor.

Our parish mission support team made an important decision in 2006. It is a $22,500 project over three years to support the education of fifteen young Carmelite men of East Timor (properly known now as Timor-Leste). These men are studying for the priesthood which in Timor-Leste strongly equates with community leadership. It is widely recognised that the Catholic Church has been the key source of leadership and empowerment for the people through so much struggle and pain. In Timor-Leste, it is only via the provision of good education that the people will be able to build a sustainable nation and future, empowered by their own leadership and esteem. Indeed, emergency supplies have been and will continue to be needed among a people, who for example, still suffer one of the worst infant mortality rates in the world. But in providing significant support for the education of these fine young leaders from among the people of Timor-Leste, we are contributing towards the establishment of the country’s own vision and sustainable future. Hence the magnet given to many in our local community at Easter 2007. It reads

Education – Our nearest neighbours’ path to hope.
www.corpuschristi.org.au supporting new leaders for Timor-Leste.

The names of the fifteen who we are supporting and with whom our parish group to visit Timor in 2005 spent time with are:

Watch this website for some photographic updates in the coming weeks as together we pray for these special people we are supporting.
 

Our growing friendship with East Timor and the members of the Carmelite Order has given our parish community a maturing in terms of our participation in the world. We have been moved by the goodness and love of a forgotten people… and in this process, we as a parish seemed to have moved beyond a ‘charity model of giving’ to a ‘relationship model of sharing’. This continues to flow over into our other avenues of sharing and outreach. May our community be blessed by our continuing friendship with the Carmelites and draw us more and more close to the hearts of the people of our local community, of East Timor and beyond.

(IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ANY OF CORPUS CHRISTI’S
CHANNELS OF SHARING RESOURCES WITH THE WIDER COMMUNITY,
PLEASE CALL THE PARISH OFFICE ON 02 4730 1249.)