Saint Francis Xavier

Francis was born in 1506 in the castle of Javier in the kingdom of Navarre, the youngest son of a noble Basque family. At nineteen he went to the University of Paris, where he shared a room with Peter Faber and, later, with an older student named Ignatius of Loyola. Francis was ambitious and at first resisted Ignatius, who kept repeating to him the words of the Gospel: “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matthew 16). In the end he was won over. He made the Spiritual Exercises and was one of the seven who took vows together at Montmartre in 1534.

In 1541, at the request of the King of Portugal, Ignatius sent him to the Portuguese Indies. He reached Goa in 1542. For ten years he travelled almost without rest: to the pearl-fishers of the south Indian coast, where he baptized thousands, and on to Malacca and the Molucca Islands. He learned prayers in the local languages, rang a bell in the streets to call the children, and taught them the catechism in song. He cared for the sick in hospitals and begged the Portuguese to treat the people justly.

In 1549 he reached Japan, where he worked for two years and founded the first Christian communities. He then set his heart on China, which was closed to foreigners. He waited on the island of Shangchuan off the Chinese coast for a boat to smuggle him in, fell ill with fever, and died there on 3 December 1552, at forty-six. His body lies in Goa. He was canonized in 1622, and in 1927 he was named patron of the missions with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.