During a Mass of thanksgiving in Horta marking the 50th anniversary of Azorean political and constitutional Autonomy, Bishop Armando Esteves Domingues invoked the Gospel image of the miraculous catch to argue that the next chapter of self-government must rest on shared responsibility, solidarity among the nine islands and an understanding of authority as service.
An archipelago has always needed more than one boat. In the Gospel account of the miraculous catch, fishermen confronted with nets so full that they threatened to break called upon their companions in another vessel to help bring the catch ashore. In Horta, on the eve of the solemn parliamentary commemoration of fifty years of Azorean Autonomy, Bishop Armando Esteves Domingues transformed that ancient image into a distinctly Azorean metaphor: no island can pull the future from the Atlantic alone.
Celebrating the Eucharist of thanksgiving at Horta’s main parish church in the presence of the President of the Republic and the leaders of the Region’s institutions of self-government, the Bishop described the achievement of Autonomy as an audacious decision to “put out into deep water.” Fifty years after the establishment of political and constitutional Autonomy, he argued, the challenge is no longer simply to celebrate what was achieved but to continue “dreaming the future together.”
For D. Armando, self-government loses part of its meaning if it becomes an assertion of one island against another. The Gospel fishermen provided his central image: when one boat’s nets became too heavy, the second boat was summoned. “Autonomy is not built through the isolation of people or one island against another, but through the interdependence of the boats,” he said. He gave that principle a deliberately concrete meaning. Autonomy will be fully realized, he suggested, when there is sufficient food, housing, education and healthcare for everyone, and when every Azorean can imagine a future. “When one island catches fish, the other must come and help pull the net. When one Azorean succeeds, the entire archipelago rises.”
It was a vision of territorial cohesion expressed not through administrative terminology but through the language of the sea. “The future of Autonomy requires the solidarity of the two boats, sharing the weight of the sea and the joy of the fish,” the Bishop declared. The metaphor carries particular force in a region whose political unity must continually negotiate the realities of nine separate territories, different population sizes and unequal access to services and opportunity.
The homily also turned toward the nature of political authority. Recalling Saint Gregory the Great and his description of himself as “servant of the servants of God,” D. Armando argued for public leadership rooted in proximity rather than privilege. “Public decisions must carry the smell of the people,” he said, and give priority to the vulnerable, using authority as an instrument of social justice and territorial cohesion. Among the challenges he identified were poverty, exclusion, the integration of foreigners and people at risk, demographic decline and responsibility toward the environment—the “Common Home.”
The Bishop placed this contemporary reflection within a much longer history of Azorean belonging. Before the creation of the Captaincy General in 1766 established a centralized political authority for the islands, he noted, the Catholic Church already regarded the Azores as a whole. The Diocese of Angra, established in 1534, created a common ecclesiastical jurisdiction extending across an archipelago otherwise divided among donatary captaincies, linking communities from Santa Maria to Corvo. Through parishes, the sacraments, catechesis, the Misericórdias, education and charitable assistance, the Church helped cultivate habits of belonging, solidarity and mutual recognition among island populations.
D. Armando also pointed to the great Azorean devotions—particularly Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres and the Cult of the Holy Spirit—as forces that have crossed island boundaries and followed Azoreans into the Diaspora. In his interpretation, this consciousness of belonging to something larger than a single island, nurtured over centuries through shared religious culture, helped create a cultural foundation upon which political Autonomy could eventually be imagined.
That historical claim led naturally to a commitment for the future. The Bishop renewed the Azorean Church’s willingness to contribute to the Region’s integral development and to the strengthening of Autonomy. His argument was ultimately less about institutional power than about responsibility: whether exercised by government, Church, civic organizations or individual citizens, authority acquires legitimacy when it serves those who might otherwise be left outside the boat.
The image with which he concluded returned once more to the Gospel and to the Atlantic. Echoing Peter’s response to Christ—“Lord, because you say so, I will let down the nets”—D. Armando asked the Holy Spirit to illuminate political leaders, strengthen families, bless the Diaspora and keep the Azorean people united in what he called the “boat of Hope.”
Fifty years after Autonomy gave the Azores the constitutional instruments to govern themselves, the Bishop’s message suggested that the deeper test lies beyond statutes and institutions. It is found in whether nine islands can share burdens as readily as achievements; whether prosperity in one place can strengthen another; whether those at the margins are brought aboard; and whether authority remembers that its first obligation is service.
The sea between the islands will always remain. Perhaps the enduring work of Autonomy is not to erase that distance, but to make certain that whenever one boat’s nets grow heavy, another is close enough—and willing enough—to help pull them home.
Based on a story in Correio dos Açores. Photos from Igreja Açores.