thegreglowe.com

In the 50 odd years since he left the catholic mission that was his childhood home, Carlos Fillipe Ximenes Belo has come a long way.

From Wailakama village on Timor’s north coast, he traveled through seminaries in Rome and Portugal, only to return to a homeland that was under the tyranny of Indonesian occupation, where his brother, uncles and cousins were being used as human shields in a government war on local resistance fighters.

This was a 25 year nightmare which eventually claimed the lives of more than 250,000 East Timorese. From the moment he was appointed Acting Bishop of Dili, East Timor in 1983, Belo was an outspoken critic of the occupation, becoming one of the important voices which forced his nation’s struggle onto the world’s agenda. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Jose Ramose Horta in 1996, for their work “towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor”. Read more…