ABSTRACT
After Father Bishop Andre de Oviedo entered Ethiopia with five members of the Society, which, as we have said, was in March 1557, the Turks kept such close watch on the ports to prevent any Christian from getting through that the people in India lost almost all hope of being able to help the fathers with new companions or to attend to the spiritual well-being of the Portuguese and Catholics that were in Ethiopia. But when the most Christian King Dom Phelippe, the second of this name, heard that only two very old fathers were left in Ethiopia, he realized that the salvation of the Catholics was in danger <[f. 328/317]> if they died and the people were left without a pastor. Therefore, because of his great zeal for the good of souls, he sent letters to the viceroy of India, who at the time was Dom Duarte de Meneses, strongly urging him to do everything he could to seek a possible way for some fathers of the Society to enter Ethiopia, sparing no expense to achieve this. These letters arrived in Goa in September 1587 when, because of the death of Viceroy Dom Duarte, India was being governed by Manoel de Sousa Coutinho. He at once sought with great care to implement what the king was commanding, because not only was it something of such great service to Our Lord, but the king was urging it so strongly that, as he told me later, he would value it more than all the other services that he had done him in India. The viceroy himself therefore went to Saint Paul’s College and asked Father Pedro Martinez, who at the time was the provincial of India and later became bishop of Japan, to give him some fathers for Ethiopia, because he had understood that from the fortress of Diu they could get through under cover on the ships that go to Maçuâ. The father was very pleased to offer him as many as he liked, because that was what the superiors in India had long desired and sought, but the governor thought that no more than two should go because of the need for extreme secrecy.
