Conrado Balweg was born in 1944 to a poor farmer family in Cordilleras
Mountains. The family belonged to the Tingguian, a tribal minority often referred
as “people from the mountains”, primitive and underdeveloped. Many people believed that the tribe were into
headhunting and animism. To escape from the branding, Conrado and his siblings were
sent on mission schools. His parents chosen the career of a priest for Conrado.
Conrado attended a priest school of the international order
of the Steyler missionaries, the "Societas Verbi Divini" (SVD). From
here, he heard the teachings of Marxism and the Liberation Theology.