Dom António Ferreira Gomes (Milhundos, Penafiel, 10 May 1906 - Ermesinde, 13 April 1989) was a Portuguese Roman Catholic bishop. He was one of the most notable figures of the Portuguese Catholic hierarchy of the 20th century, being forced to a 10 years exile outside Portugal due to his opposition to the fascist regimen.
He was first appointed by Pope Pius XII to be bishop of Portalegre, from 1949 to 1952. He would be appointed bishop of Porto, in 1952, a position that he would held until 1982.
A believer in the Catholic social doctrine, emphazised by Pius XII specially after the World War II, he was widely sympathetic to the Democratic Opposition candidate at the 1958 presidential elections, general Humberto Delgado, himself a Catholic and a former supporter of the Estado Novo. He was unable to vote in those elections for being outside Portugal at the time, for political pressions. D. António Ferreira Gomes decided to write a letter to the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, at 13 July 1958, the month after the presidential elections. The letter, which was meant to be private, acknowledged his former admiration for Salazar and some of his politics in the first years of the regimen, but ultimately criticized his social politics for being promoters of poverty and social inequality, being against some of the basic tenants recognized by the catholic social doctrine, like the right to strike and to political association. D. António accused Salazar of instead of fighting communism with his reactionary politics being promoting it, since they gave reason to many of the fair demands of the communists. The bishop suggested that the regimen should start many political reforms who eventually would lead to a true democracy in Portugal, more according with the Catholic Church social doctrine, like it was being promoted by Pius XII. The letter asked for a private meeting between the bishop and Salazar to debate these issues.
António Ferreira (1528 – November 29, 1569) was a Portuguese poet and the foremost representative of the classical school, founded by Francisco de Sá de Miranda. His most considerable work, Castro, is the first tragedy in Portuguese, and the second in modern European literature.
Ferreira was a native of Lisbon. His father held the post of escrivão de fazenda in the house of the Duke of Coimbra at Setúbal. In 1547, he went to the University of Coimbra, and graduated with a bachelor's degree.
Ferreira took his doctor's degree on July 14, 1555, an event which was celebrated, according to custom, by a sort of Roman triumph, and he stayed on as a professor, finding Coimbra, with its picturesque environs, congenial to his poetical tastes and love of a country life.
He was intimate with princes, nobles and the most distinguished literary men of the time, such as the scholarly Diogo de Teive, and the poets Bernardes, Caminha and Corte-Real. In 1558, at the age of 29, he married D. Maria Pimentel. After a short and happy married life, his wife died.
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ sɐɾɐˈmaɣu]; (16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright, journalist and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a permanent part of the Western canon".
Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, more than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago came into conflict with some groups, such as the Catholic Church. Saramago was an atheist who defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition.
In 1992, the Portuguese government, under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from the European Literary Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his work, Saramago went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, upon which he resided until his death in 2010.