[1] His father, Vicente Mariano Barreto, was a man of considerable erudition and a pedagogical sense that bore fruit in his child.

Having completed his secondary education in Pangim, Adeodato Barreto left for Portugal at the age of seventeen and enrolled at Coimbra in the law school in 1923 and, the following year, in the Faculty of Arts, for a course in history and philosophy.

This had the support of Mendes dos Remédios, Providência da Costa, e Joaquim de Carvalho who promptly helped to organise it, and correspond with renowned Orientalists such as Rabindranath Tagore and Silvain Lévi.

When it was completed and announced to its famous writer and Nobel Prize in Literature winner, its original author answered him immediately in an appreciative letter and declined to retain any copyright.

In fact, he was appointed associate professor of the Liceu de Évora in 1932 and he was soon accepted for the position of law clerk in Montemor-o-Novo.

Later he wrote O Livro da Vida (The Book of Life), a collection of poems published posthumously in 1940 in Goa.

[3] His aim to intervene among the most unprotected sections led him to create a weekly to provide support to the poor and to offer free evening literacy classes to mine workers.