An estimated 600,000 people - nearly half of East Timor’s population - packed a seaside park for Pope Francis’s final mass, held on the same field where St John Paul II prayed 35 years ago during the nation’s fight for independence from Indonesia.
The remarkable turnout was a testament to the overwhelmingly Catholic Southeast Asian country and the esteem with which its people hold the church, which stood by the Timorese in their traumatic battle for freedom and helped draw international attention to their plight.
Francis delighted them on Tuesday, staying at Tasitolu park until well after nightfall to loop around the field in his open-topped popemobile, with the screens of the crowd's phones lighting up the evening.
“I wish for you peace, that you keep having many children, and that your smile continues to be your children,” Francis said in his native Spanish.
Other papal masses have drawn millions of people in more populous countries and there were other nationalities represented at Tuesday's mass, but the crowd in East Timor, population 1.3 million, was believed to be the biggest turnout for a papal event ever in terms of the proportion of the national population.
The Tasitolu park was a sea of yellow and white umbrellas - the colours of the Holy See flag - as Timorese shielded themselves from the afternoon sun awaiting Francis’s arrival.
They received occasional spritzes of relief from water trucks that plied the field with hoses in the 31C heat.
Tasitolu is said to have been a site where Indonesian troops disposed of bodies killed during their 24-year rule of East Timor.
As many as 200,000 people were killed over a quarter-century.
Now it is known as the “Park of Peace” and features a larger-than-life-size statue of John Paul to commemorate his 1989 mass, when the Polish pope shamed Indonesia for its human rights abuses and encouraged the overwhelmingly Catholic Timorese faithful.
Francis was following in John Paul's footsteps during his visit to cheer on the nation two decades after it became independent in 2002.
East Timor remains one of the poorest countries, but the Timorese are deeply faithful - some 97 per cent are Catholic ever since Portuguese explorers first arrived in the early 1500s.
Cardinal Carmo da Silva, the archbishop of Dili, told the crowd at the end of the mass that John Paul's visit “marked the decisive step in our process of self-determination”, and Francis's visit to the same place "marks a fundamental step in the process of building our country, its identity and its culture”.
In the days leading up to Francis's trip, as many as 750,000 were forecast to attend the event, and while the mass was under way, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni cited crowd estimates by local organisers that 600,000 people were attending in the Tasitolu park and surrounding areas.
They lined up before dawn to enter the park, on the coast about 8km from downtown Dili.
“For us, the pope is a reflection of the Lord Jesus, as a shepherd who wants to see his sheep, so we come to him with all our hearts as our worship,” said Alfonso de Jesus, who also came from Baucau, the country’s second-largest city after Dili.
De Jesus, 56, was among the estimated 100,000 people who attended John Paul’s 1989 mass, which made headlines around the world because of a riot that broke out just as it was ending.
Francis arrived in the country on Monday and on Tuesday morning visited a home for disabled children run by a congregation of religious sisters.
The Pope then met clergy and religious sisters at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where he praised the women of the church and said their dignity must always be respected.
