Portal:Catholicism/Patron Archive/December 3
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Saint Francis Xavier (Basque: San Frantzisko Xabierkoa; Spanish: San Francisco Javier; Portuguese: São Francisco Xavier; Chinese: 聖方濟各沙勿略) (7 April 1506 - 2 December 1552) was a Spanish pioneering Roman Catholic Christian missionary and co-founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuit Order). The Roman Catholic Church considers him to have converted more people to Christianity than anyone since St. Paul.[citation needed]
He was born in the family castle of Xavier (from Basque etxe berri, "new house") near Sangüesa and Pamplona, in the Kingdom of Navarre, on 7 April 1506. He was the youngest son of Juan de Jasso, privy councillor to King John III of Navarre (Jean d'Albret), and Maria de Azpilcueta y Xavier, sole heiress of two noble Navarrese families.
At age 19, Francis Xavier went to study at the University of Paris, where he received a licence ès arts in 1530. At the Collège of Sainte-Barbe, Xavier was assigned to share a room with Ignatius Loyola(Indigo). Under Ignatius' influence, Xavier and six others, including fellow roommate Pierre Favre, discerned lives of service in the Catholic Church and made religious vows at Montmartre on August 15th, 1534, the feast of the Assumption. Their small company would eventually become the first Jesuits with the official founding of the order in 1540.
Francis Xavier devoted much of his life to missions in foreign countries. As King John III of Portugal desired Jesuit missionaries for the Portuguese East Indies, he was ordered there in 1540. He left Lisbon on April 7, 1541, together with two other Jesuits and the new viceroy Martim de Sousa, on board the Santiago. From August of that year until March 1542, he remained in Mozambique then reached Goa, the capital of the then Portuguese Indian colonies on May 6 1542. His official role there was Apostolic Nuncio and he spent the following three years operating out of Goa.
On September 20, 1543, he left for his first missionary activity among the Paravas, pearl-fishers along the east coast of southern India, North of Cape Comorin.
Xavier reached Japan on July 27, 1549, but it was not until August 15 that he went ashore at Kagoshima, the principal port of the province of Satsuma on the island of Kyūshū. Shortly before Christmas, he left for Kyoto but failed to meet with the Emperor. Xavier worked for more than two years in Japan and saw his successor-Jesuits established. He then decided to return to India.
He died on 3 December 1552, at age 46.
Attributes: crucifix; preacher carrying a flaming heart; bell; globe; vessel; young bearded Jesuit with a torch, flame, cross and lily
Patronage: African missions; Agartala, India; Ahmedabad, India; Alexandria, Louisiana; Apostleship of Prayer; Australia; Bombay, India; Borneo; Cape Town, South Africa; China; Dinajpur, Bangladesh; East Indies; Fathers of the Precious Blood; foreign missions; Freising, Germany; Goa India; Green Bay, Wisconsin; India; Indianapolis, Indiana;Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan;Joiliet, Illinois; Kabankalan, Philippines; Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines; diocese of Malindi, Kenya; missionaries; Missioners of the Precious Blood; Navarre, Spain; navigators; New Zealand; parish missions; plague epidemics; Propagation of the Faith
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