Saint Francis Xavier

Priest and Missionary
(1506–1552)

Saint Francis Xavier was born on April 7, 1506, at the castle of Xavier in Navarre, Spain, into a noble Basque family. He went to Paris to study at the age of nineteen and became a lecturer in philosophy at the Collège de Beauvais. There he was befriended by Ignatius of Loyola, who persistently challenged his worldly ambitions with the Gospel question, What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? The question eventually pierced his heart, and Francis became one of the six companions who with Ignatius took the vows at Montmartre in 1534 that would become the Society of Jesus.

In 1540 Francis was sent by Ignatius to represent the Society in the Portuguese mission to Asia, one of the most formidable missionary enterprises in the history of the Church. He arrived in Goa in 1542 and immediately threw himself into the work of evangelisation, moving through the villages of the Pearl Fishery Coast on foot, ringing a bell to call the children and poor to hear him, baptising thousands, and moving on to the next village. He then went to Malacca, the Molucca Islands, Sri Lanka, and Japan, which he reached in 1549 and where he spent two years establishing the Japanese church against enormous cultural and linguistic obstacles.

He had hoped to enter China, then closed to all foreigners, and had obtained the necessary papers from the Portuguese authorities when he fell ill and died on the island of Sancian, within sight of the Chinese coast, on December 3, 1552. He was thirty-six years old and had been in Asia for only ten years. In that decade he had baptised, by his own account, more people than any missionary since the Apostles. He was canonised together with Ignatius in 1622 and declared patron of all foreign missions. His feast is celebrated on December 3rd.