Pope ordains East Timor bishop

Pope ordains East Timor bishop

VATICAN CITY (AFP): Pope John Paul II ordained 12 bishops
yesterday including a second bishop for Indonesia's province of
East Timor.

Monsignor Basilio do Nascimento, former assistant to 1996
Nobel peace prize laureate Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, becomes
the bishop of the newly created Baucau diocese in East Timor
located east of the capital Dili.

Do Nascimento told the Lisbon daily Diario de Noticias that
dialog is "the only way" to resolve the problems of the Catholic
majority population in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony
which integrated into Indonesia in 1976.

Dili remains the principal East Timor diocese, with 500,000
Catholics, while the Baucau diocese, created late last month by
the Vatican, counts 200, 000.

The other new bishops ordained on Monday included five
Italians, one Indian, one Togolese, one Polish, one Albanian, one
Swiss and one Romanian.