Joseph Vaz

Joseph Vaz was born on 21 April 1651 in Benaulim, in the Salcete district of Goa, then a territory of Portuguese India. He was the third of six children of Cristóvão Vaz and Maria de Miranda, members of a prominent Konkani Catholic family of Brahmin origin that had embraced Christianity in an earlier generation. The household was known for its piety; according to traditional accounts his mother dedicated him to the Church from an early age. He received elementary schooling locally, then studied at the Jesuit College of St. Paul in Old Goa and subsequently at the College of St. Thomas Aquinas, where he completed courses in philosophy and theology. He was ordained a priest in 1676 for the Archdiocese of Goa and soon gained a reputation as a preacher, confessor, and pastor of the poor.

In the years after ordination Vaz served in Goa and, for a period, in the Kanara region (around Mangalore), where Catholics had been left without clergy. He became increasingly concerned by reports from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where the Dutch East India Company, having displaced Portuguese rule along the coasts, had outlawed Catholic priests and pressed the remaining faithful toward the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1685 he joined other Goan priests in founding a congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri at the Church of the Holy Cross of Miracles in Old Goa, the first Oratorian house in Asia, and served as its superior. With the congregation’s support he set out for Ceylon, entering Dutch-controlled territory about 1687 in the disguise of a labourer or beggar, since the presence of a Catholic priest was a capital offence under Dutch law.

Vaz first ministered in secret among Tamil Catholics in the Jaffna peninsula, celebrating Mass at night, administering the sacraments, and reconciling those who had been compelled to attend Protestant services. Living in extreme poverty and constantly at risk of arrest, he later moved south. In 1691 he was detained and taken to Kandy, the independent Sinhalese kingdom in the interior that lay beyond Dutch authority. King Vimaladharmasuriya II at first imprisoned him. Traditional hagiography relates that a severe drought ended after Vaz was permitted to pray for rain, after which the king released him and allowed him to preach and to build a church in Kandy. Vaz learned Sinhala and Tamil, adapted his manner of life to local custom, and worked among both Sinhalese and Tamil communities. He summoned fellow Oratorians from Goa, organized catechists, and reconstructed a Catholic presence that Dutch policy had nearly extinguished. During epidemics, including outbreaks of smallpox, he nursed the sick without regard to religion. He remained a subject of the Kandyan court under Vimaladharmasuriya II and the king’s successor, Vira Narendra Sinha, walking barefoot, living austerely, and placing particular emphasis on the Eucharist and devotion to the Virgin Mary.

Vaz spent the rest of his life on the island, travelling between Kandy, Puttalam, and other districts to visit scattered Catholic communities. He is credited by the Church with preserving Catholicism in Sri Lanka at a moment when it might otherwise have disappeared from the island. He died in Kandy on 16 January 1711 after a period of illness and was buried there in the church associated with his mission. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Colombo on 21 January 1995 and canonized by Pope Francis, also in Colombo, on 14 January 2015. Though Goan by birth, he is venerated as the Apostle of Sri Lanka and as that nation’s patron saint.