Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Goa and Daman


The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese of Goa and Daman encompasses the state of Goa and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu in India. The ecclesiastical province of Goa and Daman includes a suffragan diocese, Sindhudurg. The Archbishop of Goa also holds the titles of Primate of the East and Patriarch of the East Indies. The diocese is under the Roman Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
It is one of the oldest dioceses in terms of activity in the East Indes, with its origins linked to the arrival of the Portuguese on the Malabar Coast.
The current Metropolitan Archbishop and Patriarch of the East Indies is Filipe Neri Ferrão.

Special churches

The archdiocese comprises the following territories in India: the State of Goa and the territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. As of 2014, it pastorally served 641,231 Catholics on 4,194 km² in 167 parishes and 124 missions with 715 priests, 1,503 lay religious and 80 seminarians.

Ecclesiastical province

The Metropolitan has a single Suffragan see:
After the Portuguese conquest of Goa by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510, King Manuel I built a chapel there in honour of St. Catherine, named patron of the city in 1518. Christians in the region were given into the charge of OP, the Franciscan bishop of the titular see of Laodicea. He governed until 1527 when he was succeeded by Dom OFM, the Franciscan titular bishop of Aureopolis, from 1529 to 1535.
King John III of Portugal commissioned the construction of a cathedral in Goa and Pope Clement VII founded the Diocese of Goa on 31 January 1533, with the papal bull titled Romani Pontificis Circumspectio. The jurisdiction of the new diocese at the time stretched from the Cape of Good Hope to China and Japan. On 3 November 1534 the creation of the diocese was confirmed by the bull of Pope Paul III, since Clement VII's death had prevented the publication of its establishment. The diocese was originally a suffragan of the diocese of Funchal.
At the request of King Sebastian, on 4 February 1557 Pope Paul IV separated the Goan diocese from the ecclesiastical province of Lisbon and raised it to a metropolitan archdiocese, with the suffragan dioceses of Cochin and Malacca. In the course of time other dioceses were included in the metropolitan area of Goa: Macau, Funai in Japan, Cranganore and Meliapor in India, Nanjing and Beijing in China, and Mozambique in Africa. Daman in India is still included in Goa.
With the brief of 13 December 1572 Pope Gregory XIII granted the archbishop of Goa the title of Primate of the East. This is because the diocese of Goa was the first diocese of the Padroado in Asia. By 1857, Goa had gained several suffragan dioceses in the Indian subcontinent but retained only Macau and Mozambique outside that geographical area.
On 23 January 1886, Pope Leo XIII, through the bull Humanae Salutis Auctor, invested the archbishop of Goa with the honorary title of Patriarch of the East Indies. With the same bull, the diocese of Daman was established, to which was attached the title of the Archdiocese of Cranganore, that had been suppressed by the 24 April 1838 Multa praeclare decree of Pope Gregory XVI. These provisions had already been made in the concordat between the Holy See and Portugal on 23 June 1886. The honorary title of patriarch recognised the primacy of honour of the archbishop of Goa among all the bishops of the East and the historical vastness of his jurisdiction, at a time when his jurisdiction was reduced. He also enjoyed the privilege of presiding over all the synods of the East Indies
When the diocese of Daman was dissolved on 1 May 1928 with Inter Apostolicam, the title of Cranganore was attached to the Goa archdiocese. Thus, the archbishop of Goa came to be the titular archbishop of Cranganore.
In 1940, Dili was elevated to a diocese and placed as suffragan under Goa; Mozambique was in the same year spun off from the metropolitan archdiocese. In 1953 the archdiocese of Goa lost the suffragan dioceses of Cochin, Meliampor and Canara following the ecclesiastical territorial reorganisation of the new Indian state.
On 19 December 1961, the Indian Union annexed the territories of Goa, and Daman and Diu. The following year the Patriarch Archbishop José Vieira Alvernaz left the territory. In 1965, the religious jurisdiction of Diu was entrusted to the Missionary Society of St Francis Xavier. The complexities of annexing Portuguese-ruled territories meant that the Vatican did not accept the resignation of the last patriarch until 1975. The dioceses of Dili and Macau were also de-linked from the ecclesiastical province and placed directly under the Holy See.
With the Quoniam Archdioecesi bull of 30 January 1978, Pope Paul VI appointed Bishop Raul Nicolau Gonçalves as Archbishop of Goa and Daman, also titled ad honorem Patriarch of the East Indies. By Inter Capital of 12 December 2003, Pope John Paul II appointed Rev. Filipe Neri Ferrao Archbishop of Goa and Daman, also granting him the honorary patriarch title.
The Archdiocese of Goa and Daman remained—until 25 November 2006—as just an archdiocese, since the archdiocese had had no suffragan dioceses since 1 January 1975, when Macao and Dili were separated from it. On 25 November 2006, Pope Benedict XVI with Cum Christi Evangelii made the diocese of Sindhudurg a suffragan of Goa and Daman, together with which it formed a new ecclesiastical province.
The civil district of North Kanara was part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Goa and Daman till 19 September 1953 when the New Roman Catholic Diocese of Belgaum was erected. Two civil districts, Belgaum and North Kanara, were separated from the Archdiocese of Goa and two other civil districts, Dharwad and Bijapur, were taken from the Diocese of Poona to form the Diocese of Belgaum.

Saints and causes for canonisation