Early Life and Religious Vocation
The fifth child of Domingos Vaz Filipe and Ermelinda Baptista Filipe, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo was born in the village of Wailakama, near Vemasse, on the north coast of East Timor. His father, a schoolteacher, died two years later. His childhood years were spent in Catholic schools at Baucau and Ossu, before he proceeded to the Dare minor seminary outside Dili, from which he graduated in 1968. From 1969 until 1981, apart from periods of practical training (1974–1976) in East Timor and in Macau, he was in Portugal and Rome where, having become a member of the Salesian Society, he studied philosophy and theology before being ordained a priest in 1980.
Returning to East Timor in July 1981 he became a teacher for 20 months, then director for two months, at the Salesian College at Fatumaca.
Read more about this topic: Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, religious and/or vocation:
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The English are probably the most tolerant, least religious people on earth.”
—David Goldberg (b. 1939)
“Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness.”
—Georges Simenon (1903–1985)