| Sumario: | Last summer I traveled to the other end of the globe and met a modern heroine, Maryknoll Sister Nora Maulawin. I met her at Aileu, south of Dili, East Timor's coastal capital. There the Maryknoll sisters run a high school, social service center, medical clinic, religious instruction program and even operate a chicken farm in cooperation with the local youth group. In September 1999, as the Indonesian forces withdrew from East Timor, they and their local militias went on a reign of terror. Murder, looting, burning and destruction were the order of the day. The bishop of Dili also had to flee to Australia, and the bishop of Baucau took to the mountains with his people, but only after suffering stab wounds in a confrontation with the militias. Numerous sisters, brothers and priests were killed during this period. Bishop Belo's successor is Dom Basilio do Nascimento, who when we met him was apostolic administrator of Baucau, the second town in East Timor. For natural beauty, Dili is as well placed as Rio de Janeiro and, like it, has a statue of Christ on a mountain overlooking the harbor, a gift from Indonesia to Bishop Belo in honor of his Nobel Peace Prize. For the first time, the people have a sense of their own identity as East Timorese. There is much recent sorrow in that identity. The gift of hope is one that we are able to give through service and witness, on a small island half a world away. A Field Afar would have found in Sister Nora and her community the sense of Gospel globalization that missionaries have always represented. That same spirit is also alive in the work of the women and men of Catholic Relief Services.
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