As 2000 terrified residents of Dili fled to his house, the gunshots kept getting louder and more frequent. Smoke from scores of fires across Dili's suburbs drifted across his large, rambling waterfront house. By the time it came to say Mass at the open-air chapel in his garden, Bishop Belo, the Nobel laureate, was angry, very angry. The worshippers at the Mass were grim-faced. The euphoria of having voted in a UN ballot last Monday was gone.
Nobody knows how many people are dead or wounded.
Suburbs are deserted. Scores of houses have been torched. Thousands of people are huddled in churches, without food or water. Outside Dili, where the militia have seized control of many towns and villages, the situation could be even worse than in the capital, UN officials say. Ms Olandina, a member of East Timor's local parliament, also directly blamed the Indonesian military for the violence.