Antônio Ferreira Viçoso
Portuguese Roman Catholic prelate
Antônio José Ferreira Viçoso (13 May 1787 – 7 July 1875) was a Portuguese religious priest of the Congregation of the Mission. He served as bishop of Mariana from 1843 until his death. He relocated to Brazil prior to his episcopal appointment where he worked to establish the ecclesial institutions on a solid basis and opposed government efforts to control the ecclesial workings that he believed were under the domain of the episcopal superiors while he also was attentive to the needs of the poor in his diocese. In the face of strong opposition he ordained the first black slave ever to become a priest who was Blessed Francisco de Paula Victor.
His patron was Pedro II who titled him the "Count of Conceição" and made him an Imperial Counselor. Pedro II held the bishop in high esteem enough to the point that the two were collaborators and that Pedro II had granted him the Imperial Order of Christ and gave him the rank of officer of the Imperial Order of the Rose.
The cause for his beatification commenced after the bishop had died and culminated in 2014 after he was titled as venerable once Pope Francis confirmed Viçoso's life of heroic virtue.
Life
Antônio José Ferreira Viçoso was born in mid-1787 in Peniche in the Kingdom of Portugal to Jacinto Ferreira Viçoso and Maria Gertrudes; his paternal grandparents were Francisco Ferreira Viçoso and Joana Maria while his maternal grandparents were Luis dos Remédios and Joana Francisca.
In 1796 his father entrusted him to the Carmelite friars for his initial education. In 1802 he felt drawn to service as a priest and so commenced his studies for that in Santarém.
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This entry incorporates text from “Antônio Ferreira Viçoso” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.