East Timor's spiritual leader, Bishop Carlos Belo, appealed yesterday for the triumph of good over evil and urged a spirit of forgiveness despite the killings in the territory.
"We must open a spirit of forgiveness without limits and work to transform bad into goodness, dark into light, battlefields into fields of bread, and arid desert into a water-spring," he told a packed congregation during Mass at Lisbon's Salesian church.
The bishop, who arrived in Lisbon on Friday and who travels to Rome today to brief Pope John Paul, said he was strengthened by the faith and hope shown by the Portuguese who have held dozens of rallies to protest against the killings in East Timor.