OVIEDO, ANDRÉS de. — Jesuit, Patriarch of Ethiopia, b. at Illescas in 1518, d. at Fremona (Ethiopia) on 9 July 1577. Admitted to the Society of Jesus by its founder himself (1541), he was first rector of the college at Gandia (1545), founded by St. Francis Borgia while still a layman, and then of the college at Naples (1550).
Designated, along with several others, for the mission to Ethiopia, Oviedo was consecrated Bishop of Hierapolis and appointed coadjutor with right of succession to Patriarch Nuñez Barreto (q.v.). He arrived in Ethiopia in 1557 and in 1561 succeeded Nuñez, who had died at Goa without ever having seen Ethiopia. But the hopes of union with Rome grew ever weaker; indeed, Negus Adamus Ségéd forbade the missionaries to preach and kept them imprisoned along with the patriarch. Released after the death of the Negus, and with the same difficulties persisting, Oviedo retired to Fremona, where he continued to work on behalf of the Portuguese prisoners in Abyssinia. His poverty was so extreme that, to write to Pius V, he had to use the margins of some pages of his breviary, since he had already used the first blank pages to write to the King of Portugal. Yet Oviedo did not lose heart and remained at Fremona, despite having been granted by Pius V the faculty to go to Japan as bishop.