Person · Jesuit missionary
Francis Xavier
Also known as St Francis Xavier, Francisco de Xavier, Goencho Saib
Basque co-founder of the Jesuits who reached Goa in 1542 and spent ten years working the Indian coasts, the Moluccas and Japan before dying off the Chinese shore. He converted the Paravar pearl-fishers of the Coromandel in numbers, and his body was brought back to Goa, where it still is.
- Date
- 1506 – 1552
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Tradition
- Jesuit letters; Goan tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He also wrote to Lisbon in 1545 asking for the Inquisition to be sent to Goa; it arrived in 1560 and ran for two hundred and fifty years. Goans call him Goencho Saib, and the decennial exposition of his body draws several hundred thousand people.
Connections (2)
- Samadhi atBasilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa
Xavier died on Shangchuan Island off the Chinese coast in 1552 and his body was brought to Goa two years later, where it has lain in a silver casket at Bom Jesus ever since and is exposed to view roughly every ten years. The exposition draws several hundred thousand people, and the body's condition has been argued over between devotion and pathology for four centuries.
- CampaignSe Cathedral, Old Goa
Xavier wrote to João III in 1545 asking that the Inquisition be sent to Goa, and it was established in 1560, eight years after his death, in a palace beside the Sé Cathedral. Its chief targets were not Hindus but converts suspected of keeping Hindu practice, and the Syriac Christians of Kerala whose liturgical books were condemned and burned at the Synod of Diamper in 1599.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Francis Xavier”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
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