The
Portuguese voyages of discovery opened the way for direct contacts between the
Catholic Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In the 15th century, Catholic missionaries arrived in
Ethiopia. On 28 August 1439,
Pope Eugene IV sent a message of unity with the Catholic Church to
Ethiopian Emperor Qostantinos I, but this effort was unsuccessful. With Islamic attacks up to 1531 threatening Christian Ethiopia, an appeal from the Emperor to the Portuguese brought support to defeat the
Adal Sultanate in the
Ethiopian–Adal War.
Jesuit missionaries came with the Portuguese to Ethiopia. These missionaries focused their conversion activities on the country's governing class, including the emperor, to have the Ethiopian Orthodox Church unite with the Catholic Church. The Emperor
Susenyos was converted primarily by Father
Pedro Páez. In 1622, Susenyos made Catholicism the state religion. The next year,
Pope Gregory XV named
Afonso Mendes, a Portuguese Jesuit, patriarch of the Ethiopian Church. A formal union in 1626 was declared when Patriarch Mendes came to the country. With Mendes trying to
Latinize the Ethiopian church, Susenyos used force to impose the Latinization. Public backlash resulted. In 1632, Susenyos died. His successor
Fasilides in 1636 removed Mendes from the country, ended the union with
Rome and removed or killed the remaining missionaries. For the next 200 years, Ethiopia was closed to Catholic missions. In 1919, the Pontifical Ethiopian College was founded within the Vatican walls by
Pope Benedict XV, using
St. Stephen of the Abyssinians' Church, behind
St. Peter's Basilica, as the designated church for the College. and
Asmara (in Eritrea) and
Adigrat (in Ethiopia) as suffragan eparchies. and the Latin-Church apostolic vicariate was abolished. Eritrea thus became the only country where all Catholics, whatever Church of their canonical ascription, belong to an
Eastern Catholic jurisdiction. In 2003, one more eparchy was created in
Endibir in the
Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. There are also Latin Church jurisdictions in the south of Ethiopia, none of them raised to the rank of
diocese. Eight are
apostolic vicariates and one is an
apostolic prefecture. ==Eparchies==