**ÁLVARES, Gaspar Alfonso.** – Jesuit missionary, born near Coimbra in 1626, died at São Tomé on 24 November 1708. He entered the religious order in 1641, departed for India in 1647, and served as rector in Goa, superior in Bandora, and provincial of Malabar (1680–84). As procurator of his mission in Rome, he departed again in 1677. Appointed bishop of Mylapur and consecrated in Goa in 1693, he vigorously defended the permissibility of the “Malabar rites” before Clement XI against the prescriptions of Cardinal de Tournon. Several letters by the author are listed in Streit’s *Bibliotheca Missionum* (V, pp. 192–93, and VI, p. 15).
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Bibl.:** A. Franco, *Imagem de virtude em o noviciado... de Lisboa*, Lisbon 1717, pp. 656–657; E. Rivière, s. V. in DHG, II, cols. 864–65.