Filipe Neri Ferrão

Filipe Neri António Sebastião do Rosário Ferrão (born 20 January 1953) is an Indian Catholic prelate who has served as Archbishop of Goa and Daman since 2004. He was previously an auxiliary bishop of the same archdiocese from 1993 to 2004. Ferrão was created a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2022.

Ferrão is the sixth prelate of Goan origin to attain the rank of cardinal and the first Archbishop of Goa and Daman to be a cardinal since an episcopal see was established there in 1557.

Biography Early life and education Ferrão was born on 20 January 1953 in Mapusa, Goa, to Agostinho Lourenço Tomé Ferrão and Maria Palmira Eugênia Gertrudes da Conceição Nazaré; he is the youngest of their three children. (There were several priests among his relations, including two maternal uncles, two paternal uncles, and four in earlier generations.) His pastoral assignments were: Parochial Vicar at Salvador do Mundo in 1979 and in Chinchinim from 1981 to 1984; Prefect of Discipline at the Minor Seminary of Our Lady, Saligão-Pilerne, from 1984 to 1986, where he was also Director of the Vocation Commission for Diocesan Clergy.

Ferrão then studied at the Pontificia Universitas Urbaniana, obtaining a licentiate degree in Biblical Theology in 1988, and then in Brussels at the International Institute Lumen Vitae, earning a licentiate degree in catechetics and pastoral theology in 1991. He was installed as archbishop on 21 March 2004.

On 25 November 2006, the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman was reorganized as a metropolitan archdiocese with a suffragan diocese and no longer directly subject to the Holy See. Pope Benedict XVI named Ferrão its first archbishop.

Cardinal On 29 May 2022, Pope Francis announced that he planned to make Ferrão a cardinal. On 27 August 2022, Pope Francis made him a cardinal priest, assigning him the title of Santa Maria in Via.

In February 2024, Ferrão was elected President of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences replacing Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon, Myanmar.

On 23 October 2024, the Synod of Bishops elected Ferrão a member of the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod.

Ferrão participated as a cardinal elector in the 2025 papal conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV.