Oviedo, Andrés de

OVIEDO, ANDRÉS de. - Jesuit, patriarch of Ethiopia, b. at Illescas in 1518, d. at Fremona (Ethiopia) on 9 July 1577. Received into the Society of Jesus by the founder himself (1541), he was first rector of the college of Gandia (1545) founded by St. Francis Borgia, still a secular, then of the college of Naples (1550).

Designated along with several others for the mission to Ethiopia, Oviedo was consecrated bishop of Hierapolis and appointed coadjutor with the right of succession to the patriarch Nuñez Barreto (v.). He arrived in Ethiopia in 1557 and in 1561 succeeded Nuñez, who had died at Goa without having seen Ethiopia. But the hopes conceived of a union with Rome grew ever weaker; indeed the negus Adamus Ségád forbade the missionaries to preach and held them as prisoners together with the patriarch. Freed by the death of the negus, and with the same difficulties persisting, Oviedo withdrew to Fremona, remaining there to work for the benefit of the Portuguese held prisoner in Abyssinia. So extreme was his poverty that, in order to write to Pius V, he had to use the margins of some sheets of his breviary, because to write to the king of Portugal he had already used its first blank sheets. Nevertheless Oviedo did not lose heart and remained at Fremona, despite having received from Pius V the faculty to go as bishop to Japan.

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