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 its founder himself (1541), he was first rector of the college of Gandia (1545), founded by s. Fr. Borgia, still a layman, and then of the college of Naples (1550).
Appointed, together with several others, to the Ethiopian mission, O. was consecrated bishop of Hierapolis and assigned as coadjutor with right 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 entertained of a union with Rome grew ever weaker; indeed, the negus Adamus Ségád forbade the missionaries to preach and kept them, together with the patriarch, as prisoners. Freed by the death of the Negus, and as the same difficulties persisted, O. withdrew to Fremona, where he remained working for the benefit of the Portuguese prisoners in Abyssinia. So extreme was his poverty that, in order to write to Pius V, he had to use the margins of some leaves of his breviary, since he had already used its first blank leaves to write to the king of Portugal. Nevertheless, O. did not lose heart and remained at Fremona, although he had received from Pius V the faculty to go as bishop to Japan.