During the abode which Xavier made in Ternate, he heard speak of certain isles, which are distant from it about sixty leagues eastward; and which take their name from the principal, commonly called the Isle del Moro.  It was reported to him, that those islanders, barbarians as they were, had been most of them baptized, but that the faith had been abolished there immediately after it was introduced, and this account he heard of it.

The inhabitants of Momoya, which is a town in the Isle del Moro, would never embrace the law of Mahomet, though all the neighbouring villages had received it.  And the prince, or lord of that town, who chose rather to continue an idolater, than to become a Mahometan, being molested by the Saracens, had recourse to the governor of Ternate, who was called Tristan d’Atayda, promising, that himself and his subjects would turn Christians, provided the Portuguese would take them into their protection.  Atayda receiving favourably those propositions of the prince of Momoya, the prince came in person to Ternate, and desired baptism; taking then, the name of John, in honour of John III., king of Portugal.  At his return to Momoya, he took along with him a Portuguese priest, called Simon Vaz, who converted many idolaters to the faith.  The number of Christians, thus daily increasing more and more, another priest, called Francis Alvarez, came to second Vaz, and both of them laboured so happily in conjunction, that the whole people of Momoya renounced idolatry, and professed the faith of Jesus Christ.

In the mean time, the Portuguese soldiers, whom the governor of Ternate had promised to send, came from thence to defend the town against the enterprizes of the Saracens.  But the cruelty which he exercised on the mother of Cacil Aerio, bastard son to King Boliefe, so far exasperated those princes and the neighbouring people, that they conspired the death of all the Portuguese, who were to be found in those quarters.  The inhabitants of Momoya, naturally changeable and cruel, began the massacre by the murder of Simon Vaz, their first pastor; and had killed Alvarez, whom they pursued with flights of arrows to the sea side, if accidentally he had not found a bark in readiness, which bore him off, all wounded as he was, and saved him from the fury of those Christian barbarians.

The Saracens made their advantage of these disorders, and mastering Mamoya, changed the whole religion of the town.  The prince himself was the only man, who continued firm in the Christian faith, notwithstanding all their threatening, and the cruel usage which he received from them.  Not long after this, Antonio Galvan, that Portuguese, who was so illustrious for his prudence, his valour, and his piety, succeeding to Tristan d’Atayda in the government of Ternate, sent to the Isle del Moro a priest, who was both able and zealous, by whose ministry the people were once more reduced into the fold of Christ, and the affairs of the infidels were ruined.  But this priest remained not long upon the island, and the people, destitute of all spiritual instructions, returned soon after, through their natural inconstancy, to their original barbarism.