MATTEO di CASTRO. - Indian Brahmin, born to Christian parents at Divar, a small island north of Goa, about 1594. Having come to Rome in 1625, he completed his studies there and was ordained priest at the end of 1629 or the beginning of 1620. Having returned to his homeland with special faculties granted him by the S. Congregazione de 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.
Consecrated bishop on 30 Nov. 1637, with the episcopal title of Crisopoli, he was sent as apostolic vicar to the kingdom of Idalcan, a small Muslim state, now vanished, 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 into a diocese, M. was the first to fulfil perfectly the requirements of a modern apostolic vicar. His presence in India, however, aroused hostilities so serious that in 1643 he was compelled to return to Rome. There, in Sept. 1645, he was appointed apostolic vicar of Ethiopia. Having been unable to enter it, he went again to Idalcan, whence, because of renewed adversities, he returned to Rome in 1658. There, having become deaf and almost blind, he died around 20 July 1677.