PROSPERO INTORCETTA. - Jesuit, missionary, b. at Piazza Armerina (Enna) on 28 Aug. 1625, d. at Hang-chou on 3 Oct. 1696. Having fled at the age of sixteen from the College of Catania to enter the novitiate (1642), in 1657 he set out for China, where his field of work was Kiang-si and especially the city of Kien-ch’ang. He was not spared accusations and persecutions, and in 1665 he was arrested and deported first to Peking and then to Canton. When he was replaced in prison by another priest, he was able to depart for Rome (1672) to plead the cause of the mission, and above all to address the thorny question of the Chinese Rites. Two years later he was back in China; visitor for China and Japan (1676–84); then vice-provincial of China (1687–90) and finally superior at Hang-chou.
His principal work is the *Sinarum scientia politico-moralis*, partly in Chinese, printed at Hang-chou, and partly in Latin (Goa 1667).