BRIGHTON -- Father Jose Ferreria, pastor of St. Anthony of Padua Parish (Portuguese) in Cambridge will retire as pastor of the parish and become a senior priest of the archdiocese on June 30, 2007 according to an announcement by Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley.

A native of Portugal where he was born Nov. 21, 1931, Father Ferreria was ordained in Portugal on Feb. 25, 1956. He served in various priestly assignments in his native land until January 1974 when he came to Boston and served for the next 18 months as an associate at his present parish in Cambridge.

In May 1975 Cardinal Humberto S. Medeiros named him administrator of the Portuguese mission in Peabody and the following year when the Peabody mission was made the parish of Our Lady of Fatima, he was named administrator of the new parish.

In 1981 he returned to familiar territory when he was named administrator of St. Anthony Parish, Cambridge. On March 19, 1986 he was incardinated as a priest of the archdiocese and on May 12 that year he was named pastor of the Cambridge parish.

In June 1989 he went to the Merrimack Valley and served as pastor of two Portuguese parishes: SS. Peter and Paul, Lawrence (1989-1991) and St. Anthony of Padua, Lowell (1991-1995) after which he returned to Cambridge on Aug. 14, 1995 when Cardinal Bernard F. Law named him pastor of St. Anthony Parish.

In the spring of 1989 he was granted a sabbatical and he undertook a program of priestly renewal in the nation’s capital at the Washington Theological Union.

Father Ferreria also served the wider Portuguese family of the archdiocese when Cardinal Law named him coordinator of the Archdiocesan Portuguese Apostle which he served from 1993-1997.