MATTEO DI CASTRO. — An Indian Brahmin, born of Christian parents in Divar, a small island north of Goa, ca. 1594. He came to Rome in 1625, completed his studies there, and was ordained priest at the end of 1629 or the beginning of 1630. Returning to his homeland with special faculties granted by the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide to facilitate his missionary work among his compatriots, he came into conflict with the administrator of the vacant diocese of Goa and returned to Rome at the beginning of 1636.
In conflict with the administrator of the vacant diocese of Goa, he returned to Rome at the beginning of 1636.
Consecrated bishop on 30 November 1637, with the titular see of Chrysopolis, he was sent as Apostolic Vicar to the kingdom of Idalcan, a small Muslim state, now extinct, near Goa. A bishop *in partibus*, sent by the Holy See with the powers of a residential bishop to administer a territory not yet erected as a diocese, M. was the first to fully embody the requirements of a modern Apostolic Vicar. His presence in India, however, aroused such serious hostility that in 1643 he was forced to return to Rome. There, in September 1645, he was appointed Apostolic Vicar of Ethiopia. Unable to enter that territory, he went again to Idalcan, whence, due to renewed opposition, he returned to Rome in 1658. There, having become deaf and nearly blind, he died around 20 July 1677.