Gomes was widely sympathetic to General Humberto Delgado, the Democratic Opposition candidate of the 1958 presidential elections, who was also a Catholic, and a former supporter of the Estado Novo.

Therefore, Gomes decided to write a letter to the Portuguese prime minister of the time, António de Oliveira Salazar, on 13 July 1958, the month after the presidential elections.

Gomes suggested that the regime should start political reforms, which would eventually lead to true democracy in Portugal, which was in line with the Catholic Church's social doctrine.

In a letter to António de Faria, the Portuguese ambassador at the Vatican in 1962, Salazar called Gomes "a sick person and the greatest evil was having made him a bishop".

In the last years of Salazar's regime, Gomes kept a low profile, but he remained a reference for the Catholic wing of the Democratic Opposition, to which he was widely sympathetic.