Nearly half East Timor population attend Pope Francis’s seaside Mass

An estimated 600,000 people – a figure nearing half of East Timor’s population – packed a seaside park on Tuesday for Pope Francis’s final Mass (Yasuyoshi Chiba/Pool/AP)

An estimated 600,000 people – a figure nearing half of East Timor’s population – packed a seaside park on Tuesday for Pope Francis’s final Mass, held on the same field where St John Paul II prayed during the nation’s fight for independence from Indonesia.

While other papal Masses have drawn millions of people in more populous countries and there were certainly other nationalities attending Tuesday’s Mass, the crowd in small East Timor was believed to represent the biggest turnout for a papal event ever, in terms of the proportion of the population.