A Church Without Conscience: Indonesia’s Bishops and the War Criminal at the Gates

France’s Catholic newspaper La Croix bluntly declared on January 27 that a war criminal is poised to seize power in Indonesia.

That war criminal is former general Prabowo Subianto — Suharto’s son-in-law — who, despite a long history of bloodshed, stands on the brink of becoming president of the world’s fourth most populous country.

Prabowo: A brutal butcher embraced by the Indonesian Church

Prabowo was ousted from the military in 1998 for his involvement in atrocities, including the kidnapping and murder of student activists during Suharto’s bloody dictatorship. His hands are soaked in the blood of East Timor and West Papua — sites of unspeakable massacres. Yet, instead of condemnation, he was warmly welcomed by the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference on January 26.

This grotesque display is not just shameful, it’s a scandal that exposes the Church as a willing accomplice in political depravity. In every other country, a figure stained by crimes against humanity would be shunned, but here, the Indonesian Church leadership shamelessly courts him.

The Church’s disgraceful capitulation to power

Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo publicly declared that the Church will back whoever wins the election — “good or bad.” This is a disgraceful surrender of moral authority. The Church’s mission is to champion justice, not to become a spineless cheerleader for whoever claims power, no matter their sins.

This moral bankruptcy is nothing new. In 2021, while the Indonesian military waged a ruthless campaign in Papua, Cardinal Suharyo threw the Church’s weight behind the government’s violent crackdown, invoking “international law” as a perverse justification. He has never apologized or retracted this brutal betrayal of the Papuan people, mostly Christian, whose suffering he dismissed.

I condemn the Indonesian Catholic Church in the strongest terms

This is not merely an exposure of hypocrisy — it is a call-out of a Church that has lost its soul. Indonesian Church leaders are intoxicated by political power and privilege while their flock is blinded into submissive silence.

Countless priests obsess over trivial dogmas while ignoring the glaring atrocities right outside their doors. Their failure is criminal.

A young Papuan activist screamed, “This is madness — Jakarta priests cozy up with war criminals and politicians, while in Papua their own people are hunted, tortured, and slaughtered by the military. The Church here is paralyzed by cowardice and deafening silence. Their sermons gush about love, but their hearts are frozen to the bloodshed around them.”

I echo Papuan Augustinian Father Bernardus Baru’s scathing indictment: Indonesian Church leaders twist the teachings of Jesus to protect their comfort, power, and status. They have utterly failed to bring the crucified Christ’s message of justice into today’s brutal reality.

This is not a scandal. It is a moral catastrophe. Unless the Indonesian Catholic Church repents and reforms radically and immediately, it remains complicit in genocide, ecocide, and ethnocide happening on its own doorstep.