AUBURN – The Rev. Angelo Bertrand LeVasseur, 56, Catholic priest of the Diocese of Portland, died Sunday, May 31, at the Hospice House in Auburn.

He was born Jan. 14, 1953, son of Irene and Lewis LeVasseur, in Grand Isle, where he was raised.

He attended Van Buren District High School and the University of Maine at Fort Kent, where he studied English, and later taught in the Van Buren and Mars Hill school districts.

He studied philosophy and theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, Md., where he received a Master of Divinity. While at St. Mary’s, he ministered to the sick and dying at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. While a seminarian, he was deacon at St. Theresa of the Infant Jesus Parish in Mexico. He also studied at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C.

On July 31, 1983, he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Portland, at St. Gerard Church of Notre Dame du Mont Carmel Parish, in Grand Isle, by the Most Rev. Edward C. O’Leary. His first assignment was serving as Parochial Vicar at St. Andre’s Parish in Biddeford. He then became a chaplain at Bowdoin College and Bates College for several years, while doing parish ministry at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Brunswick, and St. Katherine Drexel Church in South Harpswell. While at Bowdoin, he was instrumental in bringing students to Appalachia to help the poor in Kentucky.

He then became pastor of St. Luce Catholic Church, one of the oldest churches in the St. John Valley region and in the State of Maine, and director of the Christian Life Center in Frenchville. His next assignment was at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in Sabattus, and at St. Francis Mission in Greene.

He was then assigned to what is now known as Holy Savior Parish, serving the communities of Rumford, Mexico, Dixfield, Bethel and Roxbury Pond. He was responsible for St. John’s School of the Parish of the Holy Savior.

He was a lover of nature, having skied throughout Europe; he pursued the arts and was a follower of Henry David Thoreau. One of his favorite quotes by Thoreau is, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Surviving are three brothers, Mathieu LeVasseur and wife, Patricia, of Grand Isle, Edward LeVasseur and wife, Jacqueline, of Madawaska, and Joel LeVasseur of Damariscotta; a niece, Louise Papka and husband, Mark; and three nephews, Mario LeVasseur and wife, Inna, Michael LeVasseur and Wayne LeVasseur and wife, Monique.

He is predeceased by his mother and father, Irene and Lewis, and Woody.