As many as 700,000 people are expected to attended an outdoor mass with Pope Francis next month in Dili, so authorities are bulldozing the homes of about 200 of the city's poorest residents to make room.
Minutes later, the bulldozers rolled in."I'm very sad," local resident Ana Bela da Cruz told the ABC as her home was demolished in the background.A bulldozer knocking down one of the homes of Tasitolu.The vast open space in the middle of the village area will soon play host to a huge outdoor mass conducted by Pope Francis — his final stop in a three-country tour after visiting Indonesia and Timor-Leste has a population of 1.
And when the ABC visited the site of the purpose-built alter, workers were erecting a wall nearby to screen off parts of the Tasitolu community, with residents in the area still unsure if their homes would be demolished before the pope's arrival. Yet, in a country where 40 per cent of people live below the poverty line, civil society groups are questioning the budget for the visit, as well as the forced evictions."It's not right," Valentim Pinto, director of nation-building group FONGTIL, told the ABC.
Timor-Leste Pope Mass Dili Evictions
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