COLLADO, DIEGO. - Dominican, born at Majadas (Spain), died in a shipwreck in 1641. Having arrived in the Philippines in 1611, in 1619 he was sent to Japan, where persecution was raging. Appointed superior of the mission, he travelled through the various provinces to comfort the faithful. He also wrote several works on the Chinese and Japanese languages.
Since some maintained that the mendicant orders did not have the faculty to evangelize Japan, Fr C. left for Rome to lay the question before the Holy See. The dispute was settled by the bull Ex debito (22 Feb. 1633) of Urbano VIII, by which all religious orders and institutes, as well as the Compagnia di Gesù, were granted the faculty to preach the Gospel in China, Japan, and the adjacent islands, provinces, and regions, as well as in the kingdoms of India. Departing again for the Philippines in 1637, he was assigned to Cagayán, where he devoted himself wholly to the sacred ministry. While returning from Cagayán to Manila, the ship capsized: he could have saved himself, since he was an excellent swimmer; but he remained aboard to comfort the other shipwrecked persons and perished with them near Cabicungan.