Talking it is very difficult to talk about my vocation in a few words. There are so many important events in my vocational trajectory, and most of them can only be understood in the light of the Gospel. As a child I was brought up by my parents in a truly Christian family; the foundations for receiving sound formation were crucial in a family with 11 members. Since I was born on Madeira, a tourist island, I learned from my earliest years to welcome into my home the people that used to trek along the footpaths. The joy and the warm welcome that my parents and brothers and sisters gave the visitors left their mark on my childhood.

As a child I was an acolyte at Mass and later I was made responsible for the other parish acolytes. After confirmation I joined a group for young people and when I was 16 I met the Brothers of St John of God at a summer camp. The service of hospitality remained impressed on me for ever thanks to the good example of the Brothers.

I therefore saw very clearly the direction that I had to follow,but it was not an easy decision for my parents and my brothers and sisters to accept: for I was an extremely active and restless boy, full of complexes because of the difficulties that life had visited on me.

When I was 18, following the discernment I undertook with the aid of my parish priest and the Brothers of Saint John of God, I left the island of Madeira for Lisbon and after spending two years in Fatima, as an experience and pre-postulantancy phase and after doing my military service, I spent two years in the house at Telhal followed by two years in the novitiate, in Spain, and made my first consecration to hospitality in Lisbon in 1997, when I made my first vows.

Dedication to hospitality following in the footsteps of Jesus and the example of Saint John of God demands a huge commitment every day. We have to entrust ourselves into God’s hands for our spiritual and human growth.

Today I feel happy about the path I have taken and I am still learning that He is asking me to spread far and wide the “virus” of Hospitality