PEDRO CHIRINO. — Spanish Jesuit, missionary in the Philippines, b. at Osuna (Seville) in 1557, admitted into the Society in 1580, arrived at Manila on 20 June 1590. After spending several years in the evangelization of the natives, he was appointed (1600) rector of the college of Manila, but two years later was sent to Madrid and Rome as procurator of the Philippine Province. Returning to Manila in 1606, he remained in the same city as preacher, professor of canon law and Sacred Scripture, and writer; he died there on 16 Sept. 1635.
Following the common practice of procurators of distant missions, he published in Rome a *Relación de las Islas Filipinas y de lo que en ellas an trabajado los Padres de la Compañia de Jesús* (Rome 1604, reprint at Barcelona 1890; English translation in the collection of E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson, *The Philippine Islands*, XII, Cleveland 1904, pp. 169-221 and XIII, pp. 29-217). A more extensive reworking of the 1604 report remained in manuscript (in the library of the Lazarists in Peking), perhaps so as not to duplicate the use of his major work: *Primera parte de la Historia de la Provincia de Filipinas* (1581-1606). But this too remained unpublished; it nevertheless served as the basis for the book by Fr. Francisco Colin: *Labor evangélica de los Padres de la Compañía de Jesús en las Islas Filipinas* (Madrid 1663). In the annotated reprint which he edited of the *Labor evangélica* (3 vols., Barcelona 1900-1902), Fr. Pablo Pastells inserted in the notes extensive extracts from Chirino’s original text. Chirino had also composed a *Dictionarium Sino-hispanicum* for the use of missionaries assigned to the care of Chinese immigrants in the Philippines (manuscript in the Angelica Library, Rome).