Bishop of Pesqueira
Bishop José Luiz Ferreira Salles, Bishop of Pesqueira, was born on January 23, 1957, at Itirapina, in the Diocese of São Carlos and in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. He attended the Itirapina school group for his elementary education and the Santa Teresinha Redemptorist seminary at Tietê for his secondary education, and he studied philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas and theology at the Instituto Teológico São Paulo in Ipiranga. He made his religious profession in the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer on January 31, 1982, and his perpetual profession on January 27, 1985, and he was ordained a priest on December 14, 1985. He worked in the popular missions while residing at Tietê in 1986 and 1987, and from 1988 to 1996 he was coordinator of the missionary team at Garanhuns. He was a councillor of the Redemptorist vice-province of Recife from 1993 to 1995 and its vice-provincial superior from 1996 to 2004, parish administrator of São Pedro Parish at Caraúbas, in the Diocese of Campina Grande, from 2002 to 2004, and in 2005 he was appointed rector of the interprovincial house of theology of the Redemptorist missionaries at Fortaleza, where he was also novice master of the Brazilian province of his congregation. On February 1, 2006, he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Fortaleza and Titular Bishop of Tipasa in Numidia. He received episcopal ordination on March 17, 2006, with José Antônio Aparecido Tosi Marques as principal consecrator and José Carlos de Oliveira and Sérgio da Rocha as co-consecrators. On February 15, 2012, he was appointed Bishop of Pesqueira, and he was canonically installed there on April 14, 2012.