Miguel Ferreira da Costa

Miguel Ferreira da Costa (Dom Tomás de Aquino OSB) (* 1954 in Rio de Janeiro ) is Bishop of the Catholic-traditionalist priestly community Marcel Lefebvre (USML, Union sacerdotale Marcel-Lefebvre), a strictly anti-Vatican division of the Society of St. Pius X.

Miguel Ferreira da Costa received his school education at the Colégio de São Bento in Rio de Janeiro and early on joined the group of nationalist- traditionalist Catholics around Gustavo Corção Braga (1896–1978), who rejected Vaticanum II . He gave up his law studies and became a Benedictine monastery in 1974 under the name Thomas d'Aquin in the ancient ritualistic monastery of Gérard Calvet OSB, first located in Bédoin , and from 1980 in Le Barroux . He studied theology in the home study of his monastery and in the seminary at Ecône . There, in 1980, the retired Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated him as a Catholic priest. In 1987 he became the first prior of the Benedictine monastery of Santa Cruz in Nova Friburgo (Brazil) founded by Le Barroux . Prior and monastery maintained close relationships with Lefebvre, Antônio de Castro Mayer and the Pius Brotherhood, without ever being subject to them under canon law.

In 1988, Santa Cruz did not follow the return of Gérard Calvet and Le Barroux to the full communion of the Roman Catholic Church, declared itself independent and continued to cultivate the community of the sacraments, especially with regard to ordinations , with the Society of St. Pius X. , from 2012 preferably with Bishop Richard Williamson . The connection with the Pius Brotherhood definitely broke in 2016 in the wake of the rapprochement between the Pius Brothers and the Vatican since Pope Benedict XVI, which Ferreira da Costa strongly rejected . Thereupon Richard Williamson, consecrated by Marcel Lefebvre as bishop, meanwhile again excommunicated by Rome and excluded from the Pius Brotherhood, offered the dissidents his service as supervising bishop and consecrated Ferreira da Costa on March 19, 2016 in Nuova Friburgo, disregarding Catholic canon law to the bishop. Bishop Jean-Michel Faure , who was also consecrated by Williamson in 2015, acted as co-consecrator .

Web links

• Presentation de Dom Thomas d'Aquin Ferreira da Costa. In: Reconquista blog. March 11, 2016(French). 
• Richard Williamson: Episcopal Declaration - I. April 23, 2016 . 
• Richard Williamson: Episcopal Declaration - II April 30, 2016 . 
• Manoel Gonzaga Castro: A sagração de Dom Tomás de Aquino. In: Frates in Unum. March 23, 2016 (Brazilian Portuguese).