He became a Catholic priest shortly after the Christianization of the kingdom and dedicated his life to the catechism of the Kongolese, being appointed in 1518 titular bishop of Utica, in present-day Tunisia.

[1] According to the work of Filippo Pigafetta, The Kingdom of the Kongo and the Surrounding Regions (1591); written from the notes of Duarte Lopes [fr], Henrique was born in Nsundi in 1495, being the son of Afonso I who was acclaimed King of the Kongo in 1509.

Shortly afterwards the king sent many of his children and other nobles to study in Coimbra, Portugal to aid him in modernizing the kingdom.

Among those sent included his own son Henrique, who was sponsored by the king Dom Manuel I, himself.

(Of course, the first black African bishops date from ancient Nubia and Axum during the first centuries of Christianity.)