St. Francis Xavier

On December 3 the Church honors St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552), the Jesuit missionary who brought the Gospel to Goa, the Spice Islands, and Japan, and who is the patron of all foreign missions. Born on April 7, 1506, at the castle of Xavier in Navarra, he was a student in Paris when he met Ignatius of Loyola and became one of the founding companions of the Society of Jesus. In 1541 he sailed for the East, arriving in Goa, the Portuguese capital of India, in May 1542. For the next eleven years he evangelized the fishing coasts of southern India, the Moluccas, Malacca, and Japan, reaching Kagoshima in 1549.

He died on December 3, 1552, on the island of Sancian, off the coast of China, which he was trying to reach. He was canonized with Ignatius in 1622. His relics are enshrined in the Basilica of Bom Jesus at Old Goa, one of the greatest pilgrimage sites of Asia — his body, remarkably preserved, is displayed in a silver reliquary every ten years. In Nagasaki, the church of the Twenty-Six Martyrs preserves the memory of his Japanese mission, and the Christian communities of Hidden Japan trace their faith back to his landing. Rome holds his right arm in the Church of the Gesù, the Jesuit mother church — the arm that baptized tens of thousands.