PEDRO DE ALFARO. — Spanish Franciscan, missionary in the Philippines, born in Seville in the first half of the 16th century. Superior of the first expedition of Friars Minor that departed for the Philippines (1576–77), he arrived there in July 1578. He then went to China, landing in Canton with Fathers Tordesillas and Lucarelli in 1579, but was expelled. He took refuge in Macao, where he ran a convent with a novitiate for young indigenous people. Expelled again by the suspicious Portuguese, he was exiled to Goa; however, the ship carrying him shipwrecked off the coast of Coccinica in June 1580.
BIBL.: F. de Huerta, Estado geografico, estadistico, historico-religioso de la santa y apostolica Provincia de S. Gregorio Magno ecc., Binondo 1865; L. Pérez, Origen de las Misiones Franciscanas en el Estremo Oriente, in Archivo Ibero-Americano, fasc. 1–4 (1914–1915); A. van den Wijngaert, Sinica Franciscana, II, Quaracchi 1933; cf. the review of the last work by S. Alcobendas, in Archivo Ibero-Americano, 37 (1934); Streit, Bibl., IV, pp. 317 ff.