VATICAN CITY (CNS): Bishop Carlos Belo, who has been the spiritual guide of East Timor’s successful struggle for independence, has resigned as apostolic administrator of Dili diocese for health reasons.
The Vatican announced on November 26 that Pope John Paul II had accepted Bishop Belo’s resignation after the prelate repeatedly asked to be relieved of his pastoral duties.
The Nobel Prize-winning prelate said in a statement released in East Timor that he was “suffering from both physical and mental fatigue that will require a long period of recuperation”.
Bishop Belo, 54, recently spent three months in Portugal for medical treatment.
Doctors in Portugal told Bishop Belo that if he did not slow down, “he would not be alive much longer”, said Arnold Kohen, the bishop’s biographer and a consultant for the US bishops’ Office of International Justice and Peace.
“His doctors made it clear to him that the pace at which he was going was not something he could sustain. It doesn’t mean he’s dropping out of things concerning East Timor. He just needs a different way of life,” Mr Kohen said in a telephone interview from New York.
