Barreira, Balthazar

Barreira, Balthazar a Portuguese of Lisbon, entered the Company of Jesuits at Coimbra in 1556. During the dreadful plague of Lisbon in 1569, his charity and attention to the sick were unbounded, and continued even after he had himself sickened with the disease. His excellence being thus proved, he was sent as missionary to Angola in 1580, where he learned the language and was blessed with vast success. In his sixty-fifth year, after his return to Portugal, he was sent to Cape Verd, whence he proceeded to Sierra Leone, on the coast of Africa. Hie died in 1612 at Ribeiro Grande. See New Genesis Biog. Dict. 3, 223; Landon, Eccles. Dict, s.v.