The New York Times, Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Maumere Journal
On an Indonesian Island, a Reverence for Tolerance
By JANE PERLEZ
MAUMERE, Indonesia — Until recently, the poor and largely Catholic island of Flores
was considered immune from the often-violent clashes between Muslims and
Christians that have occurred in other parts of Indonesia.
But that all changed last year when a mob came close to attacking a mosque in the
capital, Maumere.
A seaman was convicted of desecrating the wafer during a Roman Catholic Mass, a
crime for which he was sentenced to eight years. Somehow, word got around that the
man was a Muslim and that was enough to ignite the mob's passions. Violence was
averted at the last minute by the intervention of the Catholic priests.
To ease the tensions, which appear to be as much a product of poverty and
provocation by the local military as anything else, the priests at the Roman Catholic
seminary here say they have redoubled their efforts to stress forbearance.
Certainly, a recent philosophy lesson at the seminary was devoted to the work of Max
Scheler, a German thinker who wrote about the need for believers in one religion to
understand the values of other faiths.
For the trainee priests, where a majority of Roman Catholics surround a tiny minority
of Muslims, tolerance is not a new message.
But they are hearing it more urgently than ever before.
"Some of my relatives are Muslims," said the Rev. Philipus Tule, the director of the
St. Paul Major Seminary, who grew up in Flores and recently completed a doctorate
in the anthropology of religion at the Australian National University in Canberra. "We
inherited the same land and we still celebrate local customs."
"We even pray for our Muslim relatives," he continued. "It is a very advanced theology.
I started to do that when I studied Islamic theology and when I understood other
believers had the same aim: searching for God."
Catholicism arrived in 1914, when fathers from the German-based Society of the
Divine Word landed on the coast of Flores and pushed into the malaria-filled
mountainous hinterland. They succeeded — where their Jesuit colleagues had failed in
the previous century — in converting almost everyone, leaving only scattered Muslim
villages and some followers of local pagan beliefs.
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, where there is also a
significant Christian minority of about 10 percent, Flores retains the greatest
concentration of Roman Catholics, about 1.1 million people.
Pope Paul VI visited Flores in 1967, and the current pope came in 1989 to conduct a
Mass at the Maumere stadium. Sukarno, the nation's first leader after independence,
was exiled by the Dutch here, and wrote movingly about the common values of the
Catholics and the Muslims.
Currently, 700 students, almost all of them from the island, are studying at the
seminary, which was founded in 1937. Like their predecessors, some will become
pastors in other parts of the world, including the United States and Latin America.
Others will stay behind, to serve as diocesan priests or as missionaries.
Because Flores lacks the minerals, timber and oil of most of the rest of Indonesia, the
island is the nation's poorest. Crops grow, but the prices for cocoa and cashew nuts
are low. Some of the villagers who scratch a living from the fields here look as
destitute as people from some of the most devastated places of sub-Saharan Africa.
They have barely enough food, and not much else.
The priests and sisters from the Holy Spirit order say they spend much of their time
dealing with social issues that the government ignores.
Sister Eustochia Nata, born in Flores 60 years ago, is one of the most active. She
has taken things into her own hands, in part, she said, because of the failure of the
World Bank to live up to its promises of easing poverty on the island.
Bank officials had asked her on a variety of occasions to work with their projects, but
she refused.
"The last time they came to me, I said, `What percentage of your money goes to the
poor people and what percentage goes to operational?' " she recalled. "They didn't
reply and never contacted me again."
Instead, three years ago, she founded an interfaith human rights group called Truk 4.
She trains young members on a variety of social issues, including encouraging rape
victims to report their cases to the police.
The influence of the priests also reaches beyond the churches and the classrooms.
They have organized a new radio station, Radio Sonia, run by young journalists who
left the government station. In recent days, the station has spearheaded an
anti-Iraq-war drive that calls on listeners to send small packets of rice — as a symbol
of peace, not war — to the American ambassador in Jakarta.
The Rev. Paul Budi Kleden, who returned recently to Flores after 13 years studying
and serving as a priest in Europe, writes a column in the island's largest circulation
newspaper, Pos Kupang. He recently wrote against the eight-year sentence handed
down to the seaman for desecrating the wafer.
"I don't agree with such a long sentence," Father Paul said.
On the other hand, he said, he tried to understand the motivations of the youths who
wanted to attack the mosque.
"The people have lost economic possibilities, they have lost participation in politics,"
he said. "Religion is the only place where they have some space. If that is taken away
they are very angry."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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