Antonio de Castro Meyer

Antônio de Castro Mayer, STL (20 June 1904—25 April 1991) was a Brazilian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. A Traditionalist Catholic and ally of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, he was Bishop of Campos from 1949 until his resignation in 1981.

In 1988, he incurred the automatic canonical penalty of excommunication for participating in the illicit consecration of four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). This penalty also applied to Archbishop Lefebvre and the four bishops that they ordained. However a subsequent public declaration of the penalty by the Holy See omitted his name, identifying only Archbishop Lefebvre and the four bishops whom they ordained. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the canonical penalty incurred by the four surviving bishops in the hope of facilitating full reconciliation of the SSPX.

Antônio de Castro Mayer was born in Campinas, São Paulo, to Joao Mayer, a Bavarian stonemason, and his wife, Francisca de Castro, a Brazilian peasant. One of twelve children, Antônio helped his mother support their family after Joao died in 1910. At age 12, he entered São Paulo's minor seminary, then run by the Premonstratensian Fathers. After entering the major seminary in 1922, he was sent to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University (from where he obtained his doctorate in theology in 1928) in Rome. Mayer was ordained to the priesthood by Basilio Cardinal Pompilj on 30 October 1927, and then taught philosophy, history of philosophy, and dogmatic theology at the seminary in São Paulo.