Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Heilo, Sven
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
- Heilo, Sven, 1940-
Other form(s) of name
- Sven Heilo
- Sven Erik Joannes Baptista Heilo
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1940-
History
When first writing to Merton, Sven Heilo was a law student living in Lund, Sweden. He had been born in Illinois to Swedish-Lutheran parents in 1940 and moved with his family to Sweden seven years later. He converted to Catholicism in 1960. He was considering a religious vocation and writes about this and a trip to the United States in 1964. There are no extant letters from Heilo from this trip, but Merton makes some remarks about the culture and politics of America and the candidacy of Goldwater. In 1965, Heilo went to work for a customs port in Stockholm and later married.