St. Francis Xavier

St. Francis Xavier (born April 7, 1506, Xavier (Javier) Castle, near Sangüesa, Navarre [Spain]—died December 3, 1552, Sancian [now Shangchuan] Island, China; canonized March 12, 1622; feast day December 3) the greatest Roman Catholic missionary of modern times who was instrumental in the establishment of Christianity in India, the Malay Archipelago, and Japan. In Paris in 1534 he pronounced vows as one of the first seven members of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, under the leadership of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Early life and education

Francis was born in Navarre (now in northern Spain), at the family castle of Xavier, where Basque was the native language. He was the third son of the president of the council of the king of Navarre, most of whose kingdom was soon to fall to the crown of Castile (1512). Francis grew up at Xavier and received his early education there. As was often the case with younger sons of the nobility, he was destined for an ecclesiastical career, and in 1525 he journeyed to the University of Paris, the theological centre of Europe, to begin his studies.

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How did St. Francis Xavier shape Catholicism?

In 1529 Ignatius of Loyola, another Basque student, was assigned to room with Francis. A former soldier 15 years Francis’s senior, he had undergone a profound religious conversion and was then gathering about himself a group of men who shared his ideals. Gradually, Ignatius won over the initially recalcitrant Francis, and Francis was among the band of seven who, in a chapel on Montmartre in Paris, on August 15, 1534, vowed lives of poverty and celibacy in imitation of Christ and solemnly promised to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and subsequently to devote themselves to the salvation of believers and unbelievers alike. Francis then performed the Spiritual Exercises, a series of meditations lasting about 30 days and devised by Ignatius in light of his own experience of conversion to guide the individual toward greater generosity in the service of God and humankind. They implanted in Francis the motivation that carried him for the rest of his life and prepared the way for his recurrent mystical experiences.

Mission to India

After all the members of the band had completed their studies, they reassembled in Venice, where Francis was ordained priest on June 24, 1537. Having for more than a year sought passage to the Holy Land in vain, the seven, along with fresh recruits, went to Rome to put themselves at the disposal of the pope. Meanwhile, as a result of their preaching and care of the sick throughout central Italy, they had become so popular that many Catholic princes sought their services. One of these was King John III of Portugal, who desired diligent priests to minister to the Christians and to evangelize the peoples in his new Asian dominions. When illness prevented one of the two originally chosen for the task from departing, Ignatius designated Francis as his substitute. The next day, March 15, 1540, Francis left Rome for the Indies, travelling first to Lisbon. In the following fall, Pope Paul III formally recognized the followers of Ignatius as a religious order, the Society of Jesus.

Francis disembarked in Goa, the centre of Portuguese activity in the East, on May 6, 1542; his companion had remained behind to work in Lisbon. Much of the next three years he spent on the southeastern coast of India among the simple, poor pearl fishers, the Paravas. About 20,000 of them had accepted baptism seven years before, chiefly to secure Portuguese support against their enemies; since then, however, they had been neglected. Using a small catechism he had translated into the native Tamil with the help of interpreters, Francis travelled tirelessly from village to village instructing and confirming them in their faith. His evident goodness and the force of his conviction overcame difficulties of verbal communication. Shortly afterward the Macuans on the southwestern coast indicated their desire for baptism, and after brief instructions he baptized 10,000 of them in the last months of 1544. He anticipated that the schools he planned and Portuguese pressure would keep them constant in the faith.

In the fall of 1545, news of opportunities for Christianity attracted him to the Malay Archipelago. Following several months of evangelization among the mixed population of the Portuguese commercial centre at Malacca (now Melaka, Malaysia), he moved on to found missions among the Malays and the headhunters in the Spice Islands (Moluccas). In 1548 he returned to India, where more Jesuits had since arrived to join him. In Goa the College of Holy Faith, founded several years previously, was turned over to the Jesuits, and Francis began to develop it into a centre for the education of native priests and catechists for the diocese of Goa, which stretched from the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa, to China.

Years in Japan

Francis’s eyes, however, were now fixed on a land reached only five years before by Europeans: Japan. His conversations in Malacca with Anjirō, a Japanese man deeply interested in Christianity, had shown that this people was cultured and sophisticated. On August 15, 1549, a Portuguese ship bearing Francis, the newly baptized Anjirō, and several companions entered the Japanese port of Kagoshima. His first letter from Japan, which was to be printed more than 30 times before the end of the century, revealed his enthusiasm for the Japanese as, “the best people yet discovered.” He grew conscious of the need to adapt his methods. His poverty that had so won the Paravas and Malays often repelled the Japanese, so he abandoned it for studied display when this was called for. In late 1551, having received no mail since his arrival in Japan, Francis decided to return temporarily to India, leaving to the care of his companions about 2,000 Christians in five communities.

Back in India, administrative affairs awaited him as the superior of the newly erected Jesuit Province of the Indies. Meanwhile, he had come to realize that the way to the conversion of Japan lay through China; it was to the Chinese that the Japanese looked for wisdom. He never reached China, however. On December 3, 1552, Francis died of fever on the island of Sancian (Shangchuan, off the Chinese coast) as he attempted to secure entrance to the country, then closed to foreigners.

Legacy

Modern scholarship has dispelled many of the legends connected with St. Francis Xavier and has also defended him against his critics. A 20th-century estimate put the figure of those baptized by him at about 30,000, as opposed to the 1,000,000 asserted by Baroque exaggeration. In reality he had to struggle with language wherever he worked and did not possess the gift of tongues attributed to him. He is justly credited for his idea that the missionary must adapt to the customs and language of the people he evangelizes, and for his advocation of an educated native clergy—initiatives not always followed by his successors.

Research has shown that he always provided for the continuing pastoral care of the communities he founded and did not abandon them after baptism as some critics maintained. In fact, many of his own efforts were spent instructing those baptized hastily by others. The areas he evangelized in India have remained Catholic to the present day. Vigorous and prolonged persecution in the 17th century did destroy the missions he founded in the Moluccas and Japan but only after thousands had died as martyrs. Even before his death, Francis Xavier was considered a saint, and he has been formally venerated as such by the Catholic church since 1622. In 1927 he was named patron of all missions.