Statue of Abbe Faria

This is situated centrally near the Secretariat building and is a statue of Abbe Faria hypnotizing a young woman. He was a famous Goan priest, scientist, revolutionary, and hypnotist who was born in 1756 at Candolim. His parents separated when he was eight years old, his mother became a nun and his father a priest. His father took him to Lisbon in 1777 and it was there that he completed his studies and was subsequently ordained as a priest in Rome.

He reportedly collaborated with the conspirators in the failed "Pinto Revolt" in 1787. He then moved to Paris where he gained fame and took part in the French revolution, and was dramatized in Alexander Dumas's novel "The Count of Monte Cristo as the "Mad monk". He then got interested in hypnotism. His major contribution to the modern science of Hypnotism was his insistence that hypnotic trances were a result of suggestion therapy, and formed the basis of his book " De La cause de Sommeil Lucide" published the day he died in 1819 a pauper. He is considered to be the father of Hypnotism.