ALFARO, PEDRO de. - Spanish Franciscan, missionary in the Philippines, born at Seville in the first half of the sixteenth century. Superior of the first expedition of Friars Minor that set out for the Philippines (1576–77), where it arrived in July 1578. He then went to China, landing at Canton with Fathers Tordesillas and Lucarelli in 1579; but, having been expelled, he took refuge at Macao, where he established a convent with a novitiate for young natives. Expelled from there as well by the suspicious Portuguese, he was exiled to Goa; but the ship carrying him was wrecked on the coast of Cochinchina in June 1580.
BIBL.: F. de Huerta, Estado geografico, estadistico, historico-religioso de la santa y apostolica Provincia de S. Gregorio Magno ecc., Binando 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 latter work by S. Alcobendas, in Archivo Ibero-Americano, 37 (1934); Streit, Bibl., IV, p. 317 ff. Pancrazio Marschalkerwerd