ÁLVARES, GASPAR AFFONSO. – Jesuit missionary, born near Coimbra in 1626, died at São Tomé on 24 November 1708. He entered religious life in 1641, departed for India in 1647, and was rector at Goa, superior at Bandora, and provincial of Malabar (1680–84). Procurator of his mission in Rome, he departed again in 1677. Appointed bishop of Mylapur and consecrated at Goa in 1693, he vigorously defended before Clement XI the lawfulness of the “Malabar rites” against the prescriptions of Cardinal de Tournon. Several letters by A. are listed in Streit’s Bibliotheca Missionum (V, pp. 192–93, and VI, p. 15).
BIBL.: A. Franco, Imagem de virtude em o noviciado... de Lisboa, Lisbon 1717, pp. 656–57; E. Rivière, s. V. in DHG, II, cols. 864–65. Edmondo Lamalle