Vieira de Mattos, Manuel

VIEIRA DE MATTOS, MANUEL. - Bishop, b. at Poiares (Portugal) on 22 March 1861, d. at Braga on 28 Sept. 1932.

A priest in 1883, after a long and fruitful pastoral ministry he was consecrated titular archbishop of Mytilene and deputy vicar general of the patriarchate of Lisbon (1899). Four years later he was entrusted with the diocese of Guarda, which he governed with intrepid constancy in years particularly difficult for Portuguese Catholicism. A recognized leader of the Catholic party in an age of prevailing Freemasonry, he suffered arrest twice and was three times forcibly removed from his see between 1910 and 1913, but to these harassments he always opposed the resolve of his spirit and the zeal of his episcopal dignity. In 1913 Pope Pius X promoted him to the archiepiscopal see of Braga, primate of Portugal, which V. held until his death, for a span of nearly twenty years. Once the persecution against the Church had slackened, the archbishop carried out valuable work to rekindle the faith among his subjects; particularly noteworthy was the initiative, approved by the Apostolic See in 1919, to restore in his Cathedral the ancient Braga liturgy, once widely diffused in Portugal. He also concerned himself, with great success, with social and cultural problems, as well as with assistance to the indigent classes.