1552
Death of the Apostle of the Indies.
Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta, better known as Francis Xavier, was born in 1506 to a noble family of the Kingdom of Navarre, in what is now the Basque country of northwestern Spain. He studied in Paris where he met Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. This acquaintance drew him into the priesthood and into the first small cadre of members of the Jesuit order.
In 1540 the King of Portugal asked for missionaries to be sent to India where Portugal was carving out a commercial empire and Francis was chosen to lead this mission. He first based himself in Goa on the west coast of India but travelled widely though the south of the subcontinent and Sri Lanka. Casting his eyes farther east he travelled to Portuguese outposts in what is now Indonesia, southern China and Japan. In 1552 he died in China and his body was taken back to India where it is buried in splendour in Goa. (His right arm was detached and sent to the Jesuit church in Rome.)
Not only was Francis the pioneer of Catholic missions in much of Asia but he and his successors conceived of the notion of indigenous presentation, putting forth the Gospel in terms the locals could culturally understand. In India Jesuits would dress as high-caste Hindus, in China as imperial mandarins; in Canada the story of the Nativity was expressed in native terms, such as in the “Huron Carol”. Sometimes this went too far as in China where the Jesuits were accused of presenting the doctrine of the Mass in terms of ancestor worship.
Francis was canonized in 1622 and is the patron saint of Navarre, foreign missions, navigators, India and Japan.