Abstract
Leonardo de Sá, bishop of Macao, a member of the Order of Christ arrived in Macao for the first time in 1581. The Jesuits suspected him of being hostile to them. On the basis of some 17th-century information, various authorities, notably Manuel Teixeira, Hubert Cieslik and Josef Schütte, say that in 1590 de Sá was held captive in Acheh, having been seized on a return voyage from Goa to Macao in either 1586, 1587 or 1588, and was released only in 1594. This is contradicted by his imprimatur to De Missione and by references to his activity in other contemporary sources. A separate diocese for Japan had finally been established by a consistorial charter on 19 February 1588 with the establishment of an episcopal in Funai. Until then Japan had been part of the diocese of Macao, established in 1576 as a suffragan diocese of Goa as a part of the Portuguese padroado real, awarded to the Portuguese monarch.