Um franco atirador numa guerra de cem anos: o padre Pedro Borges e a questão das paróquias na Goa da Contra-Reforma

Though a Seminary had been created in Goa, in order to prepare native clergy, at the third quarter of the XVI century local priests were still scanty. This led the Portuguese King Dom Sebastian (r. 1557-1578) to apply for an indult of the Pope authorizing that parishes be entrusted to regular clergy that came in great profusion from the mother country. This created a series of conflicts with the archbishops, since only secular clergymen were under their direct rule, the regular having their own superiors, and even superior-generals in Rome, where they could move influences to obtain privileges that partially exempted them from the archbishop’s jurisdiction. Moreover, in spite of the determinations of the successive Goa Provincial Synods, most of the regulars, mostly European, never strove for learning the local language, Konknni, and therefore reached the extreme of hearing confessions trough interpreters. Since the last decade of the XVI century archbishops tried, but in vain, to retake the control over parishes; but owing to the manœuvres of the regular orders in Lisbon as well as in Rome, only in 1767, after 172 years of struggle they succeeded in getting all the parishes under their control. In was in this context that Fr. Pedro Borges, a Goan priest of brahminic origin, who had been notary of the Goa Inquisition and then parish priest of the suburban parish of Saint Lucia, decided to go secretly to Rome, by the way of the Near East, to talk directly with the Pope. He did not obtain a full satisfaction, since most parishes continued entrusted to the regulars, but succeeded at least to obtain a papal brief forbidding the bad treatment inflicted by the Friars to local Christians and other abuses. His discourse before the Pope, as well as the text of the brief and that of a decree of the Sacred Congregation De Propaganda Fide thereabout are published here .