Cerveira e Sousa (Dom José Xavier de)

The political upheavals that swept the country when constitutional government was established led to a breach in relations between the Portuguese government and the Roman Curia. Among other drawbacks, this delayed the filling of vacant episcopal sees.

The prelate Dom Francisco José Rodrigues de Andrade had left Madeira in May 1834 and, resigning the bishopric, settled in the city of Genoa, where he died and where he lies buried. Only ten years later, once diplomatic relations between Portugal and the Holy See had been restored, was the vacant office of prelate of the diocese of Funchal filled.

The man presented by the Portuguese government and confirmed by the Roman Curia was Dom José Xavier Cerveira e Sousa. He was born in the parish (freguesia) of Mogofores, in the municipality (concelho) of Anadia, on 27 November 1797, the son of Dr José Xavier Cerveira, a former magistrate, and of Dona Rosa Joaquina Cerveira de Sousa. He studied in the Faculty of Theology of the University of Coimbra (Universidade de Coimbra), took his doctorate there and was teaching at the university when he was called to guide the destinies of the Church of Funchal. He was confirmed as bishop on 14 June 1843 and received episcopal consecration on 2 June of the following year.

He arrived in Madeira on 8 July 1844 and governed this bishopric until the beginning of 1848, when he was transferred to the diocese of Beja by decree of 18 April of the same year. He left behind him here the most honourable memories of his diocesan administration, despite the struggles he had to sustain and the great difficulties that beset his episcopate. It was in his time that Protestant proselytism rose at its most tenacious and threatening. Its bold leader, a propagandist of talent and learning, was Dr Roberto Kalley, a most distinguished physician and a born orator who drew the crowds after him. Much was written in the press, in pamphlets and in books about the Calvinist propaganda in Madeira, whose chief promoter was Dr Kalley, but the history of that agitated and tumultuous period of Madeiran history has yet to be written. To escape the people’s fury, the celebrated Scottish physician had to embark in secret, carried to the beach in a hammock (rede, slung from a pole and carried by two bearers) and dressed in women’s clothes. When his flight was discovered, his furniture and his choice library were set on fire at his residence at Vale Formoso (‘beautiful valley’), for which our government had to pay compensation of several contos (one million réis) de réis.

Dom José Xavier de Cerveira e Sousa, after serving as bishop of Beja and of Viseu, retired to Mogofores, where he died, in the very house in which he had been born, on 15 March 1862. He is buried in the parish church of that parish (freguesia).