After the Qing dynasty proscribed Christianity and banished foreign missionaries in 1665, Luo became the only person in charge of the Catholic missions in China.

'The True Meanings of the Body and the Spirit'), a 1673 Chinese Catholic theology book by Raimundo del Valle.

[4] The 1673 work Xingshen Shiyi by Raimundo del Valle [es] also lists Luo's given name as Wenzhao.

[10] The spelling of this name varies across languages: Luo called himself "Gregorius Lopes" in the Latin text of a 1690 stele,[11] and Joseph Tardif de Moidrey called him "Grégoire Lopez" in the 1914 French-language work La hiérarchie catholique en Chine, en Corée et au Japon.

However, some Jesuits were concerned that their visit would disrupt Sambiasi's mission, so they kidnapped Luo and Caballero and sent them back to Fujian.

Johann Adam Schall von Bell intended to introduce him to evangelize in Korea,[22] but Luo was detained when he arrived in Beijing and sent back to Fujian.

[12] In 1640, Luo traveled from Manila to Macau with Dominican priests Juan Bautista Morales and Francisco Diez.

[26] In a 1689 letter to the Propaganda Fide, Luo said he studied Spanish and Latin in Manila, and his theology was worse than other subjects.

[26] In 1649, when Morales and Caballero returned to China, Luo met them in Anhai, Fujian, despite the ongoing war between Ming and Qing in the province.

According to San Román, Luo stayed in Fujian in this period, where he administered sacraments, rescued captives during the war, and baptized locals.

In 1665, the Qing imperial court accepted his argument, proscribed Christianity [zh], and banished all foreign missionaries to Guangzhou (Canton).

Since Luo was not a foreign missionary, he remained free in China and became the sole person in charge of the Catholic mission during the proscription from 1665 to 1671.

[36] Around 1667, Luo visited 178 churches in the provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Shanxi, Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Hebei.

[36][d] The Jesuit visitor of Macau Luis da Gama reported Luo's ministry in 1667 and confirmed it in a 1668 letter:[38] Last year, I informed Your Paternity that a Religious of St. Dominic, named Fr.

From there, he visited his and our christianities with great success and spiritual fruit of numerous souls that were in extreme need of someone to administer to them the sacraments, particularly of Confession and Holy Communion.

François Pallu and Pierre Lambert de la Motte met Domingo Fernández Navarrete in Madagascar on their way to Vietnam.

[39][40] The following month, Navarrete and the associate prior of the Dominican Province of Rome recommended Luo to the Propaganda Fide, respectively.

[40] In 1674, Pope Clement X appointed Luo the titular bishop of Basilinopolis and the apostolic vicar of Nanjing to administrate the provinces of Beijing, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, and Korea.

If Luo had accepted the appointment, Calderon threatened to expel him from the Dominican Order, recall all the Spanish missionaries from China, and end all subsidies to the Chinese missions.

[47][43] In 1680, the Propaganda Fide also appointed Bernadino della Chiesa (Chinese: 伊大任) as the auxiliary of François Pallu, who had become the apostolic vicar of Fujian.

[52] Bernadino della Chiesa had arrived in Guangzhou on 27 August 1684 and wrote to Luo, who received the letter in Fujian after Pallu's death.

[44] In 1687, Luo visited churches in Jiangnan and Shandong, and in 1690, he revisited Shanghai and Hangzhou, arriving with his auxiliary vicar on 20 July 1690.

[56] On 20 August 1690 in Hangzhou, Luo wrote to the Propaganda Fide to recommend Giovanni Francesco Nicolai, his auxiliary, as the successor to the episcopate.

[54] On 28 August, he wrote another letter to the Propaganda Fide recounting the situation of his vicariate and offering his opinions on preparation of clergy members.

In 1686, Luo wrote a long letter to the Propaganda Fide explaining the origins and meanings of Chinese rituals, and arguing Confucius-honoring ceremonies are not religious.

[56] In Luo's time, the Propaganda Fide required foreign missionaries to take an oath of obedience to the apostolic vicars of their location.

[60] According to Luo's description, the oath included renunciation of the veneration of Confucius and ancestors, and refraining from using Chinese names such as Shangdi or Tian to call God.

[61] After Charles Maigrot was consecrated as the apostolic vicar of Fujian on 5 February 1687, he strictly enforced the requirement: a missionary who did not take the oath was not permitted to administer sacraments.

In 1690, he restored the stele and wrote an inscription in Latin:[67][68] To the memory of the Reverend Father Antonio a Santa Maria of the Order of the Minorites, who was a truly apostolic servant and superior, who was called to the heavenly fatherland from the exile in Canton [Guangzhou] in the year 1669, on 13 June.

[69] According to Nicolai, when Luo realized his illness was incurable, he stopped taking his medications to save his money for the poor in his episcopate.