St Francis Xavier

St Francis Xavier (1506-1552), Spanish Jesuit missionary, called the Apostle of the Indies.

Born near Pamplona, on April 7, 1506, Xavier was educated at the University of Paris. In 1529, while in Paris, he met the Spanish ascetic Ignatius of Loyola. Xavier was one of the group that joined (1534) Ignatius to found the Society of Jesus. In 1537, the year he was ordained priest, Xavier became the first secretary of the Society of Jesus.

Xavier began his work in Portuguese India in 1542. After preaching with great success in Goa for five months, he extended his labours to southern India and Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), in which places he is credited with having made tens of thousands of converts. In 1545 Xavier left India for Malacca and the next year began to travel through the islands of the Malay Archipelago, where he founded many Christian communities. Returning to Malacca in 1547, he received information from a Japanese exile that encouraged him to attempt to introduce Christianity into Japan. After a trip to Goa he sailed for Japan with the exile, a Jesuit priest, and a lay brother and landed at Kagoshima in 1549. He studied the Japanese language for a year and then preached in many of the principal cities. By 1551, when he left Japan, he had established a vigorous Christian community.

Xavier returned to Goa in 1552 with a plan to introduce Christianity into China. To gain entrance to that country, which was then closed to foreigners, he persuaded the Portuguese authorities to send an embassy, of which he would be a member, to the Chinese emperor. The embassy departed from Goa in the spring of 1552; it went no farther than Malacca, but Xavier continued the journey alone, arriving at a small island near Macau in August 1552. He died there December 3, that same year, after repeated vain attempts to reach the mainland. His body is enshrined in Goa, in the Church of the Good Jesus.

A man of remarkable energy and organizational ability, Xavier ranks among the greatest missionaries of all time. Canonized in 1622, he was declared patron of the Orient in 1748, patron of the Faith in 1904, and with the French nun St Teresa of Lisieux, patron of all missions in 1927. Navigators, too, honour him as their patron. His feast day is December 3.