Early life of St.Francis Xavier in INDIA: He left Lisbon on 7 April 1541, Xaviers thirty-fifth birthday, along with two other Jesuits and the new viceroy Martim Afonso de Sousa, on board the Santiago. As he departed, Francis was given a brief from the pope appointing him apostolic nuncio to the East. From August until March 1542 he remained in Portuguese Mozambique, and arrived in Goa, then capital of Portuguese India on 6 May 1542, thirteen months after leaving Lisbon. Following quickly on the great voyages of discovery, the Portuguese had established themselves at Goa thirty years earlier. Francis primary mission, as ordered by King John III, was to restore Christianity among the Portuguese settlers. The Christian population had churches, clergy, and a bishop, but many of the Portuguese were ruled by ambition, avarice, revenge, and debauchery. They ignored the tenets and sacraments of the church and tended to shock and alienate the natives by their behavior. There were a few preachers but no priests beyond the walls of Goa. To meet this challenging situation Xavier decided that he must begin by instructing the Portuguese themselves in the principles of faith, and gave much of his time to the teaching of children. His mornings were usually spent in tending and comforting the distressed in hospital and prison; after that, he walked through the streets ringing a bell to summon the children and servants to catechism. One of his most troublesome problems was the concubinage openly practiced by Europeans of all ranks with the native women. Xavier tried to meet the situation by methods that were not only moral, but sensible, humane, and tactful. He was invited to head Saint Pauls College, a pioneer seminary for the education of secular priests that became the first Jesuit headquarters in Asia. Conversion of the Paravars by Francis Xavier in Goa, in a 19th-century colored lithograph. Xavier soon learned that along the Pearl Fishery Coast, which extends from Cape Comorin on the southern tip of India to the island of Manaar, off Ceylon, there was a Jati of people called Paravas, many of whom had been baptized ten years before, merely to please the Portuguese, who had helped them against the Moors, but remained uninstructed in the faith. Accompanied by several native clerics from the seminary at Goa, he set sail for Cape Comorin in October, 1542. First he set himself to learn the language of the Paravas; he taught those who had already been baptized, and preached to those who werent. His efforts with the high-caste Brahmins remained unavailing. He devoted almost three years to the work of preaching to the people of southern India, converting many, and reaching in his journeys even the Island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Many were the difficulties and hardships which Xavier had to encounter at this time, sometimes because the Portuguese soldiers, far from seconding his work, hampered it by their bad example and vicious habits. He built nearly 40 churches along the coast, including St. Stephens Church, Kombuthurai, mentioned in his letters dated 1544. During this time, he was able to visit the tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle in Mylapore, (now part of Madras (Chennai) then in Portuguese India). He set his sights eastward in 1545 and planned a missionary journey to Makassar on the island of Celebes (todays Indonesia). As the first Jesuit in India, Francis had difficulty achieving much success in his missionary trips. His successors, such as de Nobili, Matteo Ricci, and Beschi, attempted to convert the noblemen first as a means to influence more people, while Francis had initially interacted most with the lower classes (later though, in Japan, Francis changed tack by paying tribute to the Emperor and seeking an audience with him).
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 12:56:41 +0000
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