VITTORIO RICCI. - Dominican missionary, born at S. Maria a Cintoia (near Florence) on 18 January 1621, died at Parian (a suburb of Manila) on 17 February 1685.
He studied at Fiesole, then in Rome, where in 1643 he met G. B. Morales. In 1648 he departed as a missionary to the Philippines. After years of apostolate among the Chinese of Parian, in July 1655 he landed at Amoy (Fukien, China). For more than a decade he devoted himself to the evangelization of southern China and Formosa amid every kind of difficulty, and in favour of abandoned children he began what two centuries later would be called the work of the Holy Childhood. He was provincial vicar of China, apostolic prefect of Formosa and southern China, and also undertook delicate political missions between China and Formosa and between Formosa and the Philippines. He spent his last thirty years in the archipelago, often directing convents and collecting memoirs. The principal work is the Istoria della missione de' FF. Predicatori nel regno de China... from 1676, used by later historians.