Francis Xavier

Francis Xavier was born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta on 7 April 1506 at the castle of Xavier (Javier) in the Kingdom of Navarre, the youngest son of Juan de Jasso, a high official of the Navarrese royal council, and María de Azpilicueta y Aznárez. The family belonged to the Basque nobility. In 1512, while he was still a child, Castilian and Aragonese forces conquered most of Navarre; the family castle was damaged and kinsmen took part in the resistance, events that shaped his early years. He later studied at the University of Paris, entering around 1525 and residing at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, where he took a degree in arts and taught philosophy. In Paris he shared lodgings with Pierre Favre and then with Ignatius of Loyola, whose persistent spiritual counsel gradually overcame Xavier's worldly ambitions and drew him into Ignatius's circle of companions.

On 15 August 1534 Xavier joined Ignatius and five others in taking vows of poverty and chastity and a promise to go to Jerusalem, or else to place themselves at the pope's disposal, in a chapel at Montmartre. After further study and a period in Italy he was ordained priest in Venice in 1537. The Society of Jesus received papal approval from Paul III in 1540. When King John III of Portugal asked for Jesuit missionaries for the Portuguese possessions in India, Ignatius designated Xavier. Xavier left Rome, spent time at the Portuguese court, and sailed from Lisbon in April 1541 as papal nuncio to the East, reaching Goa in May 1542 after a long voyage via Mozambique.

In India he first worked in Goa among Portuguese settlers and the local population, preaching, teaching catechism, and ministering to the sick and imprisoned. He then spent years on the Pearl Fishery Coast among the Parava pearl fishers, who had been baptized in large numbers but had little instruction, and he extended that work into Travancore and other parts of southern India. He also visited Ceylon. From 1545 he traveled farther east, to Malacca, the Moluccas, and other islands of the Indonesian archipelago, preaching and organizing communities under difficult and often dangerous conditions. His numerous letters to Europe became important sources for the history of the missions and helped recruit further Jesuits for Asia.

In 1549 Xavier landed at Kagoshima in Japan, becoming one of the first Christian missionaries in that country. He studied Japanese, preached with the aid of converts such as Anjirō, and worked in Kagoshima, Hirado, and Yamaguchi; he also sought contact with authorities in the capital region. He adapted his methods more fully to local culture than he had in India, and by the time he left Japan in 1551 a small Christian presence had been planted. Determined next to enter China, then largely closed to foreigners, he reached Shangchuan Island off the Guangdong coast in 1552 and waited for a means of reaching the mainland. He fell ill with fever and died on the island on 3 December 1552, without entering China. His remains were later taken to Malacca and then to Goa, where his body is still venerated in the Basilica of Bom Jesus.

Xavier was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1619 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV in 1622, in the same ceremony as Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, Philip Neri, and Isidore the Farmer. He came to be called the Apostle of the Indies and of Japan. In 1927 Pope Pius XI declared him, together with Thérèse of Lisieux, patron of the foreign missions. His feast is kept on 3 December. He remains one of the most widely known Catholic missionaries of the early modern period, associated with the first Jesuit expansion into South and East Asia.