A missionary like no other, performing the most spectacular miracles to convert entire peoples to Jesus Christ, Francis Xavier imitated the Divine Master to the very end.

Newsroom (December 1, 2021, 1:02 PM, Gaudium Press) On May 6, 1542, the beloved son of St. Ignatius of Loyola arrived in remote and legendary India, after a troubled journey of thirteen months. The doors of Asia opened before this priest of only 35 years of age.

His first field of action was the city of Goa, the main Portuguese colony in the East, where Europeans, oblivious of their civilizing mission, engaged in lucrative commerce and allowed themselves to be swept away by the sensuality and vices of the pagan world.

In a few weeks, the beneficial effects of the new missionary’s presence, preaching, and active zeal were felt in that city: “So many people came to confession that if I were divided into ten parts, all of them would have to hear confessions” – he wrote to the Jesuits in Rome in September 1542.

“In one month I baptized more than ten thousand people”

After spending a few months in that city, Francis headed for even more distant lands. The entire southern coast of the Indian peninsula was traversed by him. From then on, his life became an uninterrupted pilgrimage to faraway lands, seas, and islands, ceaselessly expanding the frontiers of the Kingdom of Jesus. In a letter of January 1544, he said to his brothers of vocation:

“Such is the multitude of those who are converted to the faith of Christ in this land where I walk, that it often happens to me that my arms are tired from so much baptizing (…). There are days when I baptize a whole town”.

A year later, he reported new wonders worked by God in those parts:

“News from these parts of India: I let you know that God our Lord has moved many, in a kingdom where I am going, to become Christians, so that in one month I baptized more than ten thousand people. (…) After baptizing them, I commanded them to tear down the houses where they had their idols, and I ordered them to break the idol images into small pieces. When I finish doing this in one place, I go to another, and in this way I go from place to place making Christians.”

In the Empire of the Rising Sun

Thus, with the breath of the Holy Spirit filling the sails of his soul and with heroic generosity, Francis Xavier always set out, from one boldness to another, to conquer more souls for the greater glory of God.

One day, while in the city of Malacca, he was introduced to a man with slanted eyes and an intelligent gaze, who had traveled hundreds of miles for the sole purpose of meeting the famous and venerable Westerner who forgave sins… His name was Hashiro and his homeland was Japan.

Francis immediately saw the wealth that would be to the Church if the people represented by this intrepid neophyte were sanctified by the waters of Baptism.

Struggling against all kinds of adversity, Francis spent more than two years in the far-off Empire of the Rising Sun, founding churches, proclaiming the true faith to princes and nobles, to poor peasants and innocent children.

In a letter of November of that same year, he declared to his brothers living in Rome: “From the experience we have of Japan, I tell you that its people are the best of those that have been discovered so far.

However, with the objective of obtaining more missionaries for this promising land, he left for India, leaving in Japan, which would see him no more, a robust and flourishing Christianity.

Always more!

After he had traveled in all directions in the Far East for ten years and raised the Cross in the Japanese archipelago, Francis’ heart, insatiable for the glory of God, set out to conquer new peoples for his King and Lord: China was now to be his great goal.

Because of the importance of the Chinese empire, its incalculable population, and, above all, its prestige and cultural wealth, he understood that if he caused the Baptismal waters to flow there, the whole of Asia would fall at the feet of the Divine Redeemer.

The last trip

Returning from Japan, Father Francis stayed in India only a short time. Just long enough to attend to the needs of the Society of Jesus in those lands and to prepare for the long-desired trip to China.

Thus, on April 17, 1552, he boarded the ship Santa Cruz to conquer the “empire of his dreams.”

“Forsaken of all human favor”

However, only a few days of sailing had elapsed, when a terrible storm broke out. The ship’s crew, frightened by the violence of the elements and having lost any hope of salvation, asked with great cries for the sacrament of Penance.

Francis Xavier, unperturbed, recollected himself in deep prayer. And immediately – just as once before, at the voice of the Divine Savior, the waters of Lake Genezaré had calmed down – the wind ceased to blow, and the waves became smooth and calm through the faith and prayers of this humble conqueror of empires.

But from this moment on, the infernos did not cease to raise obstacles and thwart the journey. “Do not doubt that the devil in any way wants the Company of the name of Jesus to enter China,” he wrote in November 1552 to Fathers Francisco Pérez and Gaspar Barzeo.

Upon arriving in the city of Malacca, the last stop before entering Chinese waters, the Portuguese captain of that port – who owed his position to Francisco’s good offices and recommendations – unexpectedly prevented the trip from continuing, claiming that he alone was in command of an expedition to China…

All pleas and entreaties having failed, Francis Xavier used a last resort: he presented the papal bull appointing him papal legate, which until then he had never used, and demanded full freedom to travel to China on behalf of the Pope and the King of Portugal.

Moreover, he announced to the obstinate captain that he would incur ex-communication if he continued to prevent the ship’s departure. However, this too was useless. The ambition and greed of this wretch took him to the extreme of insulting and mistreating this pilgrim of God’s glory.

Finally, after several weeks of waiting, the ship Holy Cross was able to cross the waters towards China, under the command of men appointed by the Portuguese captain, who died shortly afterward, excommunicated and eaten away by leprosy.

Heartbroken, Francis revealed to Father Gaspar Barzeo in July 1552: “You cannot believe how much I was persecuted in Malacca. I am going to the islands of Canton, in the empire of China, forsaken of all human favor.”

Waiting for the boat, endlessly looking toward the goal

Sancião was the name given by the Portuguese to the inhospitable island of Shangchuan, located 180 kilometers from the city of Canton. On this island, where European ships used to dock to trade with the Chinese, the holy missionary disembarked in October 1552.

There, the Portuguese made an effort to find, among the numerous Chinese merchants, someone who was willing to take him to Canton. But they all refused because this was forbidden by imperial laws, and the transgressors risked losing all their possessions and even their lives.

Finally, one of them decided to take the risk and was willing to transport St. Francis in a small boat for 200 cruzados.

“The dangers that we run in this enterprise are two, according to the people of the land: the first is that the man who takes us, after receiving the two hundred cruzados, abandons us on a desert island or throws us into the sea; the second is that, upon reaching Canton, the governor will send us to torture or captivity” – wrote Xavier.

But the indefatigable apostle did not fear these dangers, because he was sure that “without God’s permission, the demons and their minions can do nothing against us.

Accompanied by only two assistants, an Indian and a Chinese, he stayed on the island of Sancian, waiting for the return of the merchant who had promised to transport him. He celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar there every day, looking without ceasing at the continent for which he so ardently longed.

But the days and weeks went by, and in vain did Francis wait for the return of the Chinese: unfortunately, he never returned.

Last words of a saint

The physical strength of the ardent missionary was then at its end. A very high fever forced him to retire to his improvised hut, where, abandoned by men and suffering cold, hunger, and all sorts of privations, he was to spend the last days of his heroic existence in this land of exile.

The Lord of Heaven and Earth reserved the most heroic and glorious of deaths for that man who never tired, that apostle who dragged the crowds with his words, that thaumaturgist who overcame great obstacles by performing amazing miracles: following the example of his Divine Master, Francis Xavier would die at the peak of abandonment and apparent contradiction.

A few days before he surrendered his spirit, he went into delirium, revealing the magnitude of the holocaust that Providence was asking of him: he spoke continually of China, of his vehement desire to convert that empire, and of the glory that would come to God if those people were drawn to the Holy Catholic Church.

And in the early morning hours of December 3, 1552, Francis Xavier died sweetly in the Lord, without a single complaint or claim, seeing in the distance that China he had not been able to conquer and that he had so desired to lay at the feet of its King, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

His last words were these phrases of a canticle of glory: In You, I hope, Lord. Do not abandon me forever!

Text extracted, with adaptations, from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel n. 47, November 2005.

Compiled by Sarah Gangl