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Carneiro Leitao, Melchior Miguel, Portuguese Jesuit missionary and bishop of China and Japan.
Born in Coimbra, Portugal, Carneiro entered the Society of Jesus in 1543. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the order, did not want Jesuits to become bishops, but he acceded to the 1554 request of King John III of Portugal to promote Carneiro, Joao Nunes Barreto, and Andres Oviedo to the episcopate, since no benefices or honors but rather hardships were attached. Carneiro was appointed bishop of Nicaea and one of two auxiliary bishops to Nunes Barreto, patriarch of Ethiopia. The king of Ethiopia had asked the Portuguese monarch for military assistance against the Muslims. King John, under the impression that the Ethiopian church would unite with Rome, sent the Jesuit bishops, along with a dozen confreres, to Goa, India, the gateway to Ethiopia. Carneiro arrived in Goa in 1555 and was consecrated a bishop in 1560. Named bishop of China and Japan by Pius V, he proceeded to Macao in 1568, where the next year he founded a hospital. He wanted to resign the title of bishop in 1573, but three years later the diocese of Macao was established.
Only Oviedo ever reached Ethiopia, whose ruler rejected the Portuguese overtures. With the death of Oviedo in 1577, Carneiro became patriarch of Ethiopia but actively assisted in the new diocese of Macao until Leonardo de Sa, newly appointed as the first bishop there, was able to come in 1581. The following year Carneiro resigned as bishop (having received papal permission to do so in 1578); he died in Macao.
John W. Witek, SJ