The First Salesians in East Timor: 1927 '1929

The purpose of this work is to show the process of the first presence of the Salesians in East Timor, between 1927 and 1929. It is a meteoric presence for it did not last two whole years and it is also intriguing due to questions that rose. In fact, how is it possible that the Salesians decided to abandon the Island shortly after a year and a half, when the Salesians had accepted the administration of a school of arts and crafts existing already in Dili (capital of the territory) – after having celebrated a contract with the Bishop of Macau, Josè da Costa Nunes, for a sexennium – what important reasons led the Major Superiors to take such a decision before the bilateral contract celebrated in January 1927 come to an end? Such questions we tried to answer based on existing documents, mostly in the Archivio Salesiano Centrale (Rome) and in the Archive of the Portuguese Salesian Province (Lisbon), to try to dissipate the heavy cloud of mystery that wondered the island and in the range of the Provinces of the Salesians in Portugal and China.