Saint Francis Xavier

Saint Ignati Saint Ignace Founder of the Society of Jesus and friend of Philip. us also arrived in Paris at that time, to perfect himself in the humanities. As God had inspired him with the design of assembling a company of le arned and zealous men, who compagnie d'hommes savants Religious order to which Peter Canisius belonged. would have no other goal and no other employment than to work for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, he cast his eyes upon this professor, to make him one of the most solid foundations of this society. For this purpose, he lodged near him, in the College of Sainte-Barbe. Francis Xavier was ambitious: because of the extraordinary success of his lessons, he hoped to rise, through the degree of the sciences, to some high dignity in the Church. Ignatius disabused him of the vanity of all earthly things, whose splendor passes like a dream and a flash of lightning, by often repeating to him these words of Our Lord:

"What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he is so unfortunate as to lose his soul?" He finally persuaded him to undertake an evangelical life with him and to dedicate himself to this noble employment of the conversion of sinners.

Thus, after having made the Spiritual Exercises under the guidance of such a great Master; after having erased the offenses of his past life by the abundance of his tears and by very rigorous penances (he covered himself with a rough hair shirt on his bare flesh, he bound the various members of his body with ropes, like a victim offering itself to be slaughtered by the knife of divine justice, he spent three and four whole days without taking any food and almost always in prayer); finally, after having finished the philosophy course he was teaching and begun his theology, he made a vow, with the same Saint Ignatius and five other companions, in the church of Montmartre, on the day of the Assumption of Our Lady in the year 1534, to pass as soon as possible to the Holy Land to assist the Christians who were groaning under the yoke of Muhammad, and in the event that, after having waited a year, they did not find the convenience of making this journey, to go and throw themselves at the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff to offer to serve the Church in whatever place in the world His Holiness would see fit to employ them. Thus began to be fulfilled the prophecy of a sister of our Saint, named Madeleine Xavier, abbess of the monastery of Saint Clare, in Gandia, who, learning from her father that he intended to withdraw him from his studies, begged him insistently not to do so, assuring him that he would one day be the apostle of the Indies and a preacher of the Gospel powerful in works and in words.

Since this vow, this chosen one of God completed his theological studies on the advice of Saint Ignatius, who knew that piety and fervor are of little use in evangelical workers if they are not accompanied by solid doctrine and a perfect understanding of the Holy Scriptures. After a year or eighteen months, he left Paris with his companions to go to Venice, which was the place where they were to embark. Upon his departure, the spirit of mortification with which he was filled led him to wrap small cords around his arms and thighs, which, being extremely tight during the agitation of the journey he made on foot, entered so deeply into his flesh that they were almost no longer visible and the surgeons judged it impossible to remove them without making very painful incisions. His companions, moved by compassion, and seeing moreover that this operation would greatly delay their journey, had recourse to God, and their prayers were so effective that, the very next night, they fell off by themselves and left our blessed pilgrim the freedom to walk. When he was in Venice, he would have no other lodging, while waiting for the time to set sail, than the Hospital for the Incurables. One cannot worthily enough represent what he did for the assistance and consolation of the sick; not content with spending the whole day dressing their wounds, making their beds, and rendering them even lower and more disgusting services, he spent entire nights by their side. His care was not limited to the relief of bodies. Although he hardly knew Italian, he did not fail to speak to them very often of God and he especially exhorted the most libertine to penance, making them understand as best he could that, if their bodily illnesses were incurable, those of their souls were not. He won a signal victory over himself which deserves to be reported: one of the sick had an ulcer that was horrible to see and whose stench was even more unbearable than the sight; no one dared to approach this wretch, and Xavier himself once felt much reluctance to serve him; but he then remembered a maxim of Saint Ignatius, his father, that one only advances in virtue as much as one overcomes oneself and that the occasion of a great sacrifice was one of those precious encounters that should not be let slip. Fortified by these thoughts and animated by the example of Saint Catherine of Siena, which then came back to his mind, he embraced the sick man and kissed his wounds; at the same instant all his reluctance ceased, and from then on he had no more trouble with anything, so important is it to conquer oneself once and for all.

Having spent two months in these exercises of charity, he set out for Rome with the other disciples of Saint Ignatius, who remained alone in Venice. They had much to suffer on this journey; the rains were continuous and bread often failed them when their strength was most exhausted; but our Saint gave them courage and he sustained himself by the strength of that apostolic spirit with which God had begun to fill him. He visited the principal churches in Rome, and he consecrated himself there to the evangelical ministry on the sepulchers of the apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul. He had the honor of speaking several times to Pope Paul III, who had been informed of his merit and that of his companions; he received his blessing for the journey to the Holy Land and obtained, for those who were not yet priests, permissi on to be prom pape Paul III Pope who approved the Somascan Order in 1540. oted to Sacred Orders; finally, feeling animated by a new fire to work for the conquest of souls that the corruption of morals was causing to perish on all sides, he took the road back to Venice where Saint Ignatius was waiting for him.

Upon his arrival, he made a vow of perpetual poverty and chastity with the others, in the hands of Jerome Varelli, the Pope's nuncio, and, entering the Hospital for the Incurables, he continued there, until the moment of embarkation, the exercises of charity that the journey to Rome had caused him to interrupt. However, the war that broke out between the Venetians and the Turks, having broken the trade of the Levant and closed the door to the Holy Land, our generous pilgrims were forced to take other measures. Saint Francis, to make himself more useful to his neighbor, in whatever place divine Providence would lead him, prepared himself to receive the priesthood; he received it effectively with feelings of piety, fear, and confusion that cannot be expressed. The city seemed to him little suited for preparing to say his first mass. He therefore retired for this purpose to a hut near Padua, covered only with thatch, abandoned and all in ruins. How different his exercises in this place were from those of those undevout priests who prepare for their first mass only through useless visits and assemblies that take away the little recollection and interior spirit they had received in their ordination! He spent forty days in continuous solitude, exposed to the insults of the weather, sleeping only on the hard ground, chastising his body rudely, and living only on a few pieces of bread that he begged in the surroundings, without almost breaking the silence he had prescribed for himself. He then occupied himself for more than two months in instructing, through catechisms and familiar discourses, the towns and villages around and especially that of Monselice, which was the closest, where the people were the coarsest and had almost no knowledge of the duties of Christianity. Finally, he said his first mass in Vicenza, where Saint Ignatius took all his companions, and he said it with such an abundance of tears that those who attended could not help but weep themselves.

Shortly after, he fell very seriously ill and he had no other retreat in this great necessity than one of the hospitals of the city where they gave him only half of a bad bed, in a room open on all sides, with remedies and food so poor that they were in no way capable of curing him; but Saint Jerome, to whom he was extremely devoted, appeared to him one night in the midst of a great burst of light; and, after having revealed to him what would happen to him later, he put him in a state to soon recover his health. Thus, the year during which his company was to wait in the State of the Republic of Venice for a favorable opportunity to go to the Levant having expired, without any appearance of being able to go there, he went to Bologna by the order of Saint Ignatius, in order to work there for the salvation of souls, until the Pope, whom some others went to consult, had prescribed to each of them what they should do for the glory of God and the service of the Church.

The hospital was at first the place of his retreat; but he could finally not refuse Jerome Casalini, a priest of great merit and pastor of Saint-Luce, to go and live at his house. He refused only his table and would never live on anything but what he begged from door to door in the city. Every day, after having celebrated the divine mysteries in the church of this wise ecclesiastic, he heard the confessions of all those who presented themselves. He then visited the prisons and hospitals, taught catechism to the children, and preached to the people in the public squares; which he continued to do always, notwithstanding a very malignant and very stubborn quartan fever that threw him into extreme languor and emaciated him so much that he looked like nothing more than a skeleton.

He was occupied in Bologna with these excellent duties of charity when Saint Ignatius, who had been very well received by the Pope, called him to Rome to help him with the establishment of his company. He found there new opportunities to exercise his zeal. His Holiness assigned him the church of Saint Lawrence in Damaso as the place for his functions, and he worked wonders by the strength of his preaching and his assiduity in hearing établissement de sa compagnie Religious order to which Peter Canisius belonged. the confessions of penitents. Death, hell, and judgment were the most ordinary subjects of his sermons, and, although he simply proposed these terrible truths, he did so nevertheless in a way so touching that the people, who had come in crowds to listen to him, did not leave the church without tears in their eyes and thinking much more about converting themselves, to avoid the punishments of the justice of God, than about praising the preacher. What did this incomparable man not do in a horrible famine that occurred in Rome and that threatened to depopulate the whole city? What care did he not take, either to lead to the hospitals the poor whom he found lying on the pavement and dying of hunger in the streets and squares, or to carry them there himself on his shoulders when they were too weak to drag themselves, or finally to procure assistance for them by engaging the rich to open their purses and their granaries to give them alms?

At that time John III, King of Portugal, and the most religious prince of his century, made very great requests to the Pope, through Dom Pedro de Mascarenhas, his ambassador to the court of Rome, to have six of Ignatius's companions to go and carry the light of the Gospel to the East Indies. The holy F ounder, to whom Hi le saint Fondateur Founder of the Society of Jesus and friend of Philip. s Holiness was pleased to refer the matter, replied that, being only ten in number, he could by no means give six, as Europe, which was entirely disfigured by vice and heresy, had no less need of evangelical workers than those distant lands which were still engaged in paganism; but that he would give two of great merit, who would satisfy the King's desires. The Pope approved this response and wished for Ignatius to choose these missionaries himself. The Saint first named Father Simon Rodriguez and Father Nicolas Bobadilla; but the latter having fallen ill with a continuous fever, and the matter not being able to suffer delay, he was inspired by heaven to name Saint Francis, whom divine Providence had destined from all eternity for this employment. He therefore called him at that very moment and, in the movement of the divine Spirit with which he was filled, he declared to him the election that heaven had made of his person for the conversion of the Indians: "It is from His Holiness," he added, "that you must receive this mission: I am only his organ to announce it to you, just as he is only the organ of the Holy Spirit to explain his will to you. This employment should be all the more dear to you, as it will satisfy the ardor you have to carry the faith beyond the seas. You are not being offered a province or a kingdom of the Levant to convert; you are being presented with an entire world, composed of more kingdoms than there are in all of Europe. This field, so vast and so extended, was alone worthy of your courage and your zeal. Go then generously, my brother, where the voice of God calls you, and where the Holy See sends you, and set everything ablaze with the divine fire with which you are yourself ablaze."

One cannot express the joy that this news gave to our Saint. He had often been warned by mysterious dreams that Our Lord had brought him into the world to be the apostle of a world of idolaters; but, when he saw clearly what divine Providence asked of him and that he could find the opportunity to endure martyrdom, he rendered great thanks to God, and, without making any other resistance than to testify to his own incapacity, he replied that he was ready to go wherever the Pope wished to send him. He had only the remainder of that same day to prepare for this great journey. When he went to kiss the feet of the Pope and ask for his blessing, His Holiness showed him singular affection and tenderness and exhorted him to walk in the footsteps of the Apostles, just as he shared in the excellence of their ministry. He also recommended that he have constant recourse to the protection of Saint Thomas, who first carried the Gospel to the Indians. Finally, he embraced him more than once and gave him a very ample blessing.

Saint Francis left Rome on March 15, 1540, in the company of the Portuguese ambassador, with no other belongings than a poor cassock, an old cloak, and a breviary. He made the entire journey to Lisbon by land, passing through France and Spain. During this long journey, which lasted more than three months, he gave admirable proofs of his virtue. He often got off his horse to let the lackeys who were on foot ride; he yielded the beds that were available in inns to others, and contented himself, for his own person, with a little straw in the corner of a stable; finally, he made himself the servant of the whole company, and lowered himself, for that purpose, to the tasks of the lowest valets. He was received in Bologna, where he had previously announced the word of God, with a thousand demonstrations of respect and gratitude; he preached and heard confessions there, and these functions, which he performed with marvelous zeal, gave the inhabitants an extreme desire to be able to keep him. Several of the ambassador's officers were miraculously delivered from very great perils by the power of his prayers. He also made pressing exhortations to them to apply themselves seriously to the matter of their salvation, and the success of his fiery speeches gives us reason to say that he was their apostle before being that of the Indians.

His detachment from his parents and all the people of his acquaintance was above all an example of the rarest and most heroic virtues that are read in the history of the Saints. His mother was still living, and he had many brothers, relatives, and old friends, both at the castle of Xavier and in the surrounding area; as he passed through Navarre and the city of Pamplona, which was not far away, the ambassador pressed him to honor them with a visit, pointing out to him that, leaving Europe perhaps never to return, he could not honestly excuse himself from giving them such a legitimate consolation. But this heavenly man, in whom the world was dead, just as he himself was dead to the world, replied constantly to His Excellency that he reserved seeing his parents in heaven, not just in passing with the sorrows that separations and farewells ordinarily cause on earth, but for all eternity and with a joy that would never be mixed with pain: which filled the ambassador and his entire suite with astonishment.

His conduct in Lisbon was no less admirable than it had been throughout the journey; he was received there by the King and the entire court as a man come from heaven, and His Majesty gave orders to lodge and treat him honestly with Father Simon Rodriguez, who had arrived by sea before him. They took, however, no other lodging than the hospital, and would have no other food than that which they begged through the city, asking for alms from door to door. While waiting for the time to embark, they applied themselves to their ordinary exercises of preaching, confession, the guidance of souls, and the instruction of children through catechisms; their labors had so much success that they reformed the entire city and even the entire court in a short time; to such an extent that the gentlemen who were closest to the King confessed, received communion every week, and gave the people rare examples of modesty and devotion.

The King, who believed that his States of Portugal were preferable to the lands he possessed in the Orient, took the resolution to keep these holy missionaries with him and to have the obedience they had for the Indies changed. The matter was brought to Rome, and the Pope having left the regulation of it to Saint Ignatius, this blessed founder sent word to the two Fathers who had written to him to prevent a change, that the King should hold the place of God for them and that they must obey him blindly; but at the same time he sent word to Dom Pedro de Mascarenhas that both were at the disposal of the prince, and that he believed it was appropriate to use a compromise in this, keeping only Father Simon Rodriguez for Portugal and letting Father Xavier go to the Indies. His Majesty agreed to this division, and our Saint, who greatly feared that his mission would be revoked, felt an extraordinary joy to see himself chosen again for this great enterprise. A short time later, four apostolic briefs were placed in his hands, two by which His Holiness made him his nuncio throughout the Orient and gave him very ample powers to extend and maintain the faith in Persia, the Indies, Japan, China, and the other surrounding kingdoms; and two others where he recommended him to the Christian princes who had States from the Cape of Good Hope to beyond the Ganges.

This quality of Nuncio of the Pope did not make him diminish anything of his humility and his poverty. He was offered money, furniture, and provisions for this voyage; but he refused them constantly, having the design of living everywhere as an apostle and by asking for his bread, even on the ship where he would be embarked. He accepted only a few small books of piety that he foresaw he would need in the Indies, and a habit of thick cloth against the excessive cold that one has to suffer beyond the Cape of Good Hope. He went to sea on April 7, 1541, full of the apostolic spirit, with Fathers Paul de Camerini and Francis Mancias, Portuguese, who, having embraced his institute, also wished to have a part in his labors. The Viceroy Dom Martin Afonso de Sousa asked him to embark on the flagship, and he could not refuse him this favor which he desired with extreme passion; but he never wanted to eat at his table, remaining firm and unshakeable in the resolution he had taken to always live as a beggar.

However, one cannot believe the services he rendered on the ship, where there were no less than a thousand people of all sorts of conditions: by his prudence and his wise remonstrances, he banished from it games of chance, quarrels, blasphemies, swearing, slander, dissolute words, and other disorders that idleness ordinarily produces on ships. He preached there every feast day at the foot of the mainmast with marvelous profit, and he did not fail every day to teach the catechism to the sailors, who were little instructed in the principles of our faith. He had prayers said publicly, he listened to confessions with surprising assiduity and patience; he assisted the sick and served them at the same time as doctor, nurse, and priest; finally, in this great difference of people who filled the ship, he made himself all things to all men to win them all. His charity and his zeal shone forth principally in the troublesome and even pestilential diseases with which most of the passengers were attacked beyond the line. He wiped them in their sweats, cleaned their ulcers, washed their linens, and rendered them the most abject services; but he took care above all of their consciences, and his main occupation was to prepare them to die as Christians. Having himself fallen into an extreme languor, he did not interrupt these offices of charity; and as he was given a room a little better than before and the Viceroy sent him dishes from his table, he put the sickest in this room and distributed to them the dishes that were brought to him, contenting himself with the deck for a bed and very poor food for nourishment.

The fleet having stopped at Mozambique, on the eastern coast of Africa, to winter, he continued his assistance there toward his dear sick whom they had disembarked, and one saw him in the hospital going from room to room and from bed to bed to give remedies to some and administer the sacraments of the Church to others. He also watched over the dying during the night and did not abandon them until they had rendered their last breath. In a malignant fever, which so many fatigues brought upon him, he did not fail to visit these poor afflicted ones and to assist them as much as his great weakness could permit him.

As soon as he was healed, he had to return to the sea, and his ship arrived safely, first at Malindi, then at Socotra, where he spread such a pleasant odor of sanctity that, when he was obliged to set sail, the natives of the country, although barbarians and of a very strange religion, wept bitterly to see themselves deprived of such amiable company, from whom they hoped for great help. From Socotra, he was in a short time at Go a, Goa Place of transfer of the apostle's relics by the Portuguese. which was at that time the capital of the Indies, the seat of the bishops and viceroys, and the most considerable and frequented place in the Orient for commerce. His arrival is marked on May 6, 1542. When he had disembarked, he went to take his lodging in the hospital, and, after having paid his respects to the guardian angel of the Indians and to the apostle Saint Thomas, who first announced the Gospel to them, he went to greet the bishop, who was Dom João de Albuquerque, a religious of Saint Francis, a prelate of very great merit and one of the most virtuous who was then in the Church. He explained to him the reasons for which the Sovereign Pontiff and the King of Portugal had sent him to this country; he presented to him the briefs of His Holiness which established him as his apostolic nuncio throughout the Orient, with letters patent from His Majesty, and declared to him that he did not wish to use either except with his blessing and depending on his authority.

His first care was to dress, instruct, console, and strengthen the sick. He then began to reform all the Orders of the city, which were in a strange state of depravity; for one still saw there a great number of idolaters whose life was much more like that of a beast than a man, and who, changing gods every day, performed abominable ceremonies in their honor. Among the Christians, adultery, concubinage, usurious and fraudulent dealings, murder, and a thousand other disorders worthy of the thunderbolts of heaven were even tolerated. Justice was sold in the courts, and the most enormous crimes went unpunished when the criminals had the means to corrupt their judges. The ignorance of the mysteries of our religion and the rules of Christian morality was extreme, and no one took the trouble either to be instructed or to send their own to public instruction. The use of the sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist was almost abolished; and if anyone, by chance, touched by the remorse of his conscience, wanted to reconcile himself with God before a priest, he dared only do so at night and in secret, so extraordinary and shameful did the action appear. Finally, such a contempt for ecclesiastical censures had been reached that they were no longer capable of stopping this torrent that was precipitating everyone into hell.

What did the great Francis not do to remedy so many evils? He began with the catechisms of the children, whom he instructed so well in the truths of the faith and the rules of piety and Christian modesty that they shamed their parents and forced them by their example to come and listen to this heavenly missionary. He then mounted the pulpit and began to thunder against vice, and his word had so much force that he won over the most hardened sinners and made them weep bitterly for their offenses. The fruits of penance that accompanied these tears were certain proofs of their conversion. False contracts and usurious dealings were broken; ill-gotten gains were restored; slaves who were unjustly possessed were freed; concubines whom one did not wish to marry were sent away; justice was restored to the splendor and freedom it should have, and the use of the sacraments became frequent as it was in the first fervor of this Church. It was mainly at this time and for this great success that one began to call him the Apostle, just as his distinguished piety had previously earned him the name of holy Father.

As soon as the affairs of Goa were in the state we have just described, he passed to the Fishery Coast, which extends from Cape Comorin to the island of Mannar. The inhabitants of this country, named Paravas, that is to say fishers, because their occupation was to fish for pearls, had received Baptism; but nothing remained of Christian in them but the character. The depravity of their morals was general, and their life was more a life of idolaters than of disciples of Jesus Christ. While crossing Cape Comorin, he converted an entire village plunged into the darkness of idolatry, through the miraculous deliverance of a woman who had been in the pains of childbirth for three days. His labors among the Paravas had an even more complete success. He won back to Our Lord thirty villages of which this region was composed; he taught them, through a thousand holy industries and without knowing their language, the first elements of the Christian doctrine; he confessed an infinity of them who had violated the purity of their baptism by their infidelity; he baptized more than forty thousand who had not yet been washed and regenerated in the blood of Jesus Christ; he healed hundreds of them, either by making the sign of the cross over them, or by sending them young children newly baptized, with his rosary, his crucifix, or his reliquary, to have them touch them and pronounce over them the Lord's Prayer or the Apostles' Creed. He had a church built in each village in honor of the true God, in place of the abominable temples they called pagodas, where false gods were worshipped. Finally, he entirely exterminated paganism and had all the idols to which public worship had been rendered for so long burned.

His admirable life and his miracles contributed not a little to these conversions; for he had no other food than rice and water, which was that of the poorest on the coast; he slept only three hours each day, and, as the bare earth was his bed, so he had no other lodging than a fisherman's hut. The process of his canonization makes mention of four dead people to whom God restored life, at that time, through his ministry; and the healings of which we have just spoken were as many wonders that did not come from the efforts of nature, but from the operation of divine power.

The following year, after having made a trip to Goa to establish a seminary there for the benefit of young Indians, and having returned to the Fishery Coast to console and help his dear Paravas, whom the Badagas, their enemies, had plundered and put to flight, he went to the kingdom of Travancore, where he produced inestimable fruit by the force of his preaching. The king himself was so touched by it that he gave the Saint permission to preach in all his States, and con royaume de Travancor Indian kingdom where Xavier baptized thousands of people. sented that all his subjects could embrace Christianity and be baptized by his hand. It was there that he received the gift of tongues, so as to be able to speak without an interpreter to the idolaters; that he made an army of barbarians who were coming to attack the new Christians flee, by saying to them only, with the crucifix in his hand: "I forbid you, in the name of the living God, to go any further, and I command you, on his behalf, to turn back"; that being persecuted and sought to be put to death by the Brahmins, who were the priests of the country, he avoided their traps and was preserved from the blows they dealt him, by a singular protection of divine goodness; that he baptized, in a single month, ten thousand pagans; that he first had forty-five churches built, and that finally he confirmed, by the resurrection of several dead, the Catholic truths, and confounded the obstinacy of the infidels, who did not want to yield to his reasons or his prayers. These wonders acquired for him such high esteem among the Indians that there was no province, city, or village that did not ardently desire to possess him.

This made him wish to have new companions to help him in such an abundant harvest. He often said, in this sentiment, that this great number of idle priests, whom one saw in Europe, were very guilty for not coming to employ their talents for the salvation of so many souls, who were perishing miserably for lack of preachers to announce to them the truths of the Gospel; and he wrote to the University of Paris to excite it to send him some of their body, full of science and zeal, to work for such a glorious conquest. He had at this same time the consolation of learning, not only the conversion of the inhabitants of the island of Mannar, whom one of the priests he had left on the Fishery Coast had attracted to the faith, but also the martyrdom of six to seven hundred of these neophytes who were put to death by the order of the King of Jaffna. The fury of this prince against the faithful went to such a point that he had his eldest child slaughtered for having embraced Christianity; and then the body of this glorious soldier of Jesus Christ having been buried, a very beautiful cross appeared on his tomb which the idolaters could never erase, and which, having remained radiant, was the cause of the conversion of a very great number of barbarians. As for the tyrant, who also pursued his wife and his other son, as Christians, he died miserably, and lost, with his life, the kingdom he had usurped from his brother.

After so many victories won over Satan, over the infidels, and over their priests, the blessed Francis made a journey to Meliapor, which the Portuguese call the city of Saint Thomas, because that holy Apostle endured martyrdom there and received burial. He found there a chapel dedicated in his honor, with a large piece of white marble, placed at the back of the altar, upon which it is held that he was put to death; this is why the first time that Mass was said in this oratory, it distilled blood in the sight of everyone. Our Saint often prayed there, in order to merit the help and protection of this admirable preacher of the Gospel, and he soon saw that his groans had been heard; for, the demons having attacked him very furiously one day when he was at this chapel, he mocked their insults and forced them, by his constancy, to withdraw in confusion. Moreover, he received in this place marvelous consolations and a very clear light regarding the journeys he had to make to increase the kingdom of God. He departed from there for Malacca, for Ambon, for small islands in the vicinit y, for Malacca Strategic city in Malaysia where the saint stayed several times. the Moluccas, of which Ternate is the capital, and for the great island of Moro, where the city of Monoya is located. He acquired everywhere an infinity of servants for Jesus Christ, and performed actions full of glory, many of which were miraculous and above the powers of all nature.

In Malacca, he healed a young man whose health was entirely desperate; he restored life to a young girl who had been buried in his absence; he obtained for the inhabitants a signal victory at sea, with only seven or eight old fustas, against Soora, admiral of Alaradin, king of Achem, who had come to insult them with an army of sixty large vessels and a quantity of frigates, boats, and fireships. In Ambon, he assisted with indefatigable charity a Spanish fleet that had landed there, and whose soldiers were afflicted with the plague; and, not content with procuring alms for those who were afflicted with this evil, he exposed himself a thousand times to being infected by it, through the spiritual and temporal aid he gave them. In the vicinity of the neighboring islands, he plunged his crucifix into the sea to appease a furious storm; and, as he let it fall by inadvertence, as soon as he had arrived at the shore, a crab brought it back to him in its claws, holding it upright and raised, as if to show the triumphs that the Cross had won over so many infidel hearts. In the Moluccas, he converted King Tabarigia and Queen Neachile, with two princesses, sisters of Cacil, king of Ternate, and touched them so strongly that they entered into the ways of the greatest detachment and the highest piety. Finally, in Monoya and on the island of Moro, which had been described to him as incapable of instruction and commerce with Christians, since the inhabitants had renounced their baptism because of the mistreatment by the Portuguese, he spoke with such force and unction of the eternal pains of hell that he cast terror into their minds and forced them to return to the exercises of Christianity.

It is time to speak of the journeys he made to the various kingdoms of Ja Japon Far Eastern country evangelized by the saint. pan, which, for their happy success, earned him the name of apostle of that nation as well as that of the Indies. He first passed back through the islands, cities, and provinces that he had watered with the salutary rain of the Gospel. He planted crosses there in the public squares and the most frequented streets; he confirmed the Christians there in the doctrine of the faith and the true morality he had taught them; he fought there, by word and in writing, against the libertinism of those who belied the holiness of their religion by the corruption of their morals; he showed his zeal for the glory of God on a thousand occasions, his ardor for the salvation of souls, and the eminent gifts he had received, both of speaking languages and of healing all kinds of diseases. This caused attempts to be made to divert him from his great enterprise of the spiritual conquest of Japan; but as he knew, assuredly, by the supernatural lights that God had given him, that it was His will that he pursue it, he courageously boarded a ship, and after a thousand dangers he ran there, whether by the fury of storms or by the malice of a Chinese captain who had taken him on his vessel, and who, in the false zeal of his idolatry, was often on the point of massacring him or throwing him into the water, he finally arrived happily at Kagoshima, one of the f irst citi Cangoxima The first city in Japan where Xavier landed. es of Japan, on August 15, 1549.

His first retreat was at the home of a man named Anjiro, whom he had converted in Goa and to whom he had given, at baptism, the name of Paul of the Holy Faith. Through him, he had access to the King of Satsuma, and he so won his good graces and those of the queen, his wife, that he obtained permission to preach the Christian law in all the lands under their obedience. He did so first at Kagoshima, and he had the consolation of seeing many great lords embrace, through his ministry, the doctrine of the Savior of the world. The bonzes, who were like the religious of the country, enclosed in various monasteries, opposed the progress of his preaching. They slandered him and did their best to discredit him before the people; they often entered into discussion with him and employed all the subtlety of their minds to make him fall into confusion; they inspired secret distrust of his conduct in the leaders of the court; but they advanced little by these artifices. Francis dispelled their slanders by the innocence and purity of his life, which was always irreproachable. His austerity and his disinterestedness were proofs that he sought neither pleasures nor riches, but that it was the sole desire to win souls for God that had already made him travel more than half the way around the world. He refuted with such force the extravagances of these bad doctors, and established so solidly the unity of one God and the other mysteries of Christianity, that they no longer dared to enter into combat with him.

Finally, he confirmed by miracles the truths he taught. Walking one day by the sea, he noticed fishermen who were spreading their empty net and complaining of having caught nothing. He had pity on them, and after his prayer, he advised them to fish again; then Our Lord gave such a great blessing to their work, and they caught so many fish and of so many kinds, that they could barely pull in the net. They continued their fishing the following days with the same success, and what is more surprising, the sea of Kagoshima, which was hardly full of fish, was extremely so thereafter. He healed a child, whom a swelling of the whole body made extraordinarily deformed, by only taking him in his arms and repeating to him three times these words: "God bless you!" He also healed a leper separated from the commerce of other men, by making three signs of the cross over him, after he had assured him that he believed in Jesus Christ and that he would be baptized. He resurrected a girl whose father came to implore his help, by simply saying to this man: "Go, your daughter is alive." An idolater, carried away by his own fury or animated by that of the bonzes, one day charged him with atrocious insults. He saw at that very hour the terrible punishment that divine justice was preparing for him, and said to him with a somewhat sad air: "May God preserve your tongue!" Immediately this wretch felt his tongue eaten by a canker, and a quantity of pus and worms came out of his mouth with an unbearable stench.

These miracles and this punishment, which were new sources of conversions, nevertheless only irritated the bonzes more. Finally, they caballed so well at the court of Satsuma, that the king, who had shown such great dispositions toward Christianity, and who had even had letters patent issued, by which he gave power to all his subjects to embrace it, changed his mind entirely and forbade, by a completely contrary declaration, leaving or fighting by word of mouth or in writing the ancient religion of Japan. Saint Francis, recognizing by this that divine Providence wanted him elsewhere, after having confirmed this nascent church of Kagoshima with powerful discourses filled with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, left his kingdom with some companions full of zeal, and took the road to Hirado.

On the way, he won to Jesus Christ almost an entire castle that belonged to a lord called Hexandono; he baptized his wife and his eldest son there, gave the form of Christian assemblies and prayers there, and marked a place in the castle to hold them; finally, he laid there, as well as at Kagoshima, the foundations of a flourishing church that has since formed there, when a sufficient number of priests and ministers were sent to confer the sacraments and celebrate the holy Mysteries. Upon leaving, he left the lady a small book written in his own hand, and to the steward of Hexandono an iron discipline he had used, which were since sources of supernatural healings.

The welcome the King of Hirado gave him was wonderful. He granted him the permission that the King of Satsuma had taken from him, namely, to preach the faith in his lands: and he did so with such happiness that in less than twenty days he baptized more pagans there than he had in a whole year at Kagoshima.

This ease made him believe that one of his companions would suffice to increase this new Christian church. Also, wanting to attack heresy in its stronghold, he set out for Miyako, which was the seat of the empire of Japan. As he had to pass through Yamaguchi, capital of the kingdom of Nagato, he found such great corruption of morals there that he thought himself obliged to stay there for some time to try to bring a remedy; but his remonstrances and exhortations were useless: the shameful and brutal passions of which the inhabitants of this place had made themselves slaves prevented them from listening to the words of life he preached to them and from seeing the heavenly light he presented to them. The king was no more docile than his people; he wanted to hear Xavier, but he rejected his doctrine as a fable and remained stubborn in the worship of idols and demons, without wanting to recognize the true God, who had the kindness to manifest Himself to him through the mouth of his servant.

The same thing happened at Miyako. One cannot believe the hardships the Saint and his company suffered on this journey; it was winter, which the winds, rains, and snows make extraordinarily harsh in this country; they were poorly dressed and had neither money nor any provisions for their subsistence; they went on foot, and for lack of good guides, they often got lost in the woods and in the detours of the waters and mountains. One can judge from this what the courage of Xavier was, not to succumb under such terrible fatigue. He would have been consoled if his work had contributed to the conversion of a single idolater; but he found the whole city in such great preparations for war that no one was thinking of the things of religion; so that, not having been able to have an audience with either the emperor or the Shogun, who is the great Pontiff, especially because they asked him for a lot of money to arrange it for him, he took the road back to the city of Yamaguchi.

It was then that, at the persuasion of his friends, or rather by a heavenly inspiration, which made him know that the evangelical preacher must sometimes accommodate himself to the weakness of his listeners, to win them more easily, he took a habit a little cleaner than the one he had worn before, having often experienced that such a torn habit made him rejected by princes and persons of condition, and closed the door of their palaces to him. This precaution was useful to him with the King of Yamaguchi, with some rarities from Europe that he gave him as a gift. For this prince, who had been so little favorable to him the first time he had come to the city, this time gave him full power to preach, to discuss, to baptize, and to compose an assembly of the faithful. On this permission, a great gathering of doctors of the country took place every day, in the place where he lived, to submit doubts to him. He listened to them attentively, and, which is surprising and of which there is no other example in Ecclesiastical History, by a single answer, he satisfied at the same time ten or twelve different difficulties on subjects that had no connection; so that each of those who had questioned him found, in the word he answered, the true clarification of his doubt. God also returned to him the gift of tongues that He had granted him in the Indies, on various occasions; for, without ever having learned the Chinese language, and having studied the Japanese one very little, he preached every morning, in Chinese, to the merchants of China who traded in Yamaguchi, and in the afternoon he preached to the Japanese, in their language, but so easily and so naturally, that to hear him one would not have taken him for a foreigner.

By this means, many idolaters recognized their errors and opened their eyes to the sacred lights of the Gospel; the bonzes lost their credit, their corrupt morals became a horror, their monasteries were depopulated, and their colleges were abandoned. They made strange efforts to sustain themselves, they often renewed the discussion with Saint Francis, they invented a thousand slanders against him, they even had the skill to win back the king and engage him in a cruel persecution against the Christians; but all their intrigues could not prevent the progress of religion. The number of the faithful rose in a few days to more than three thousand in this city, and they were all so fervent that there was not one who was not ready, not only to lose his goods, but even to shed his blood for the defense of the faith. However, various reasons obliged our Saint to take the road back to the Indies, where the affairs of his Company and of the new Christendom necessarily required his presence. He therefore left Father Cosme de Torres and Brother Juan Fernandez at Yamaguchi, and went to the port of Hiji, near Funai or Fuchu, capital of the kingdom of Bungo, to board a Portuguese ship that had arrived there full of merchandise.

We will not stop here to describe the honors he was shown when he arrived at this vessel, and when from there he was led into Fuchu, to the prince's palace; his march was no less august than that of a sovereign; the welcome he received from the King of Bungo was so glorious that never had one seen a private man in Japan treated with so much respect and magnificence. This king, after having a thousand honors rendered to him by his officers, bowed three times before him to the ground, took him by the hand, made him sit at his side, and, leaving the pride of royal majesty, which the kings of Japan never discard in public, he conversed familiarly with him as with his private friend. Then, by a completely extraordinary favor, he had him eat at his table; and, as he conceived a high idea of the Christian religion, he gave him power to announce it in his States and to confer baptism on all those who would ask for it. Francis still had to sustain the fury of the bonzes in this city. He often entered into regulated discussion with them, and showed the folly of their imaginations and the extravagance of their sect. He established, on the other hand, with wonderful light and solidity, the truth of Christianity, and God poured so much anointing on his words that the idolaters themselves, especially the king, the princes, and the lords of the court, applauded everything he said and gave him the victory. Nevertheless, few of those who listened to him were judged worthy to receive the sacrament of regeneration; for although they submitted their minds to the truths of the faith, they were nevertheless engaged in shameful vices that they were not yet resolved to leave. This was only done a few years later, when new missionaries were sent to cultivate this field that our blessed apostle had discovered and on which he had cast the first seeds of the Christian doctrine.

Everything being ready at the port of Figen for embarkation, Saint Francis finally took leave of the King of Bungo, who had shown him such great kindness. It was November 20, 1551, two years and nearly four months after his arrival in Japan. His plan was to go to Malacca, which he knew, by revelation, to be besieged by sea and land by a powerful army of Javanese and Malays, and to go from there to Goa, where the Holy Spirit was calling him and telling him inwardly that his presence was necessary. The navigation was initially quite fortunate; but, in the vicinity of the island of Meleitor, a storm arose so furious that one cannot imagine a more terrible one. The longboat, where fifteen men were, was torn by the winds from the sides of the large ship and carried off to very distant seas. The ship itself saw itself on the verge of shipwreck, so that the passengers, almost flooded by a mountain of water, expected nothing but the final blow of death; but the Saint did so much through his tears, at the feet of the crucifix, that he obtained from Our Lord the salvation of his entire company. The storm subsided, the ship he was on was put out of danger, and those who were sailing in the longboat saw him sitting near them, holding the rudder and bringing it back, in the midst of storms and tempests, straight to the ship from which the winds had separated it. Many other miracles occurred during the course of this voyage; but what is much more significant is that, having told his pilot that none of the ships he would captain would ever be shipwrecked, the truth of this prediction has since been seen, in that, this pilot having captained several in very poor condition, on the trust he had in this promise, no accident ever happened to him. Similarly, the Saint having assured of a ship called the Holy Cross that it would not perish at sea, but that it would fall apart at the place where it had been built, it ran thereafter, for more than thirty years, all the seas of Asia, in the midst of a thousand dangers and with loads much heavier than it could carry, without suffering from calm or storms, and it finally went to fall apart on the shore of Cochin, which was the place where it had been assembled.

The brevity required by this summary does not allow us to dwell on what Saint Xavier did, both in Malacca and in Goa, during the time of his return. We will only say that he took the resolution there to execute as soon as possible what he had proposed as soon as he was in Japan, that is to say, to go and carry the faith into China, because he recognized more and more that all the corruption of the Indies and Japan came from there, and that one would never succeed in ruining idolatry in these vast countries until one had first ruined it in China. He had his plan approved by the Viceroy of Portugal and the Bishop of Goa, whose authority extended over all the Indies. He regulated the affairs of the other missions and those of the Company and provided for the needs of all the Christians he had won to Jesus Christ since his arrival in the Levant. He appointed as rector of the college of Goa and as vice-provincial of the Indies the Reverend Father Gaspard Barzée, who was a man of consummate prudence and virtue; he gave him written instructions, admirable for governing his inferiors well and for working usefully for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Finally, recognizing him then as his superior, he knelt before him, in the presence of the whole community, and promised him obedience. Thus, everything being prepared to set sail, he embarked on Holy Thursday, April 14, 1552, and took the path to China. Passing through Malacca, he gave himself to the service of the plague-stricken with the same generosity as he had done on so many other occasions. He also resurrected a dead man, who had killed himself thoughtlessly by putting the iron of a poisoned arrow into his mouth. But his voyage there was thwarted by the governor of the city in a manner so malicious and so stubborn that there was never anything more barbaric. He was forced to leave in Malacca the ambassador of Portugal, who was to lead him to China, to board another ship than the one that had brought him, and to put himself in the company of the people of this treacherous governor, who, following the example of their master, had nothing but harshness for him. He did not fail on the way to shower them with favors. Their water being consumed, he changed that of the sea into fresh water, to deliver them from a cruel thirst that inflamed their entrails. He preached to them often, to make them renounce pleasure and self-interest, which are the passions that dominate most in merchants. He made various predictions to them, the event of which did not fail to justify the truth. A child having fallen into the depths of the sea, he brought him back six days later, and returned him full of health and life to his father: which was the cause of the conversion of this man, who was a Mahometan.

He finally arrived a t Sanci Sancian Island near China where Francis Xavier died. an, which is an island that faces Canton, a city of China, and which is only six leagues away. It would have been easy for him to cross there, were it not for the prohibition that was then in force, not to allow the entry of any foreigner, whoever he might be; but, as this order was strictly observed there, and the gates were guarded for that reason with extreme rigor, he was forced to seek various means to obtain their opening. While he was employing to this end sometimes prayers and tears at the foot of the crucifix, sometimes what God had given him of prudence and light, he fell gravely ill with a malignant fever, accompanied by disgust, colic, and headaches, which soon made it judged that he would not recover. He first withdrew into the ship, which was the common hospital for the sick, in order to die as a poor man, as he had always lived as a poor man. But, as the continuous agitation he felt there increased his headache and prevented him from applying himself so freely to his God, he asked, the following day, to be put back on land. They transported him there and left him on the shore, exposed to the insults of the air and a very biting north wind, which was blowing at that time. He would have died deprived of all help, if a Portuguese, more charitable than the others, named Georges Alvarez, had not had him carried into his hut, which was, however, hardly better than the shore, and which was open on all sides. This servant of God spent thirteen days in this extreme poverty, deprived generally of all things. He was bled twice; but he was bled so poorly that the nerves were offended and he fell each time into weakness and convulsion. He had no other food, in this extremity, than a few almonds that the captain of the ship gave him out of charity.

However, the closer his final hour, of which God had given him knowledge, was, the more he was inflamed with the desire for blessed eternity. It was nothing but devout aspirations, short and affectionate prayers. He said incessantly: "Jesus, Son of David, look upon me with an eye of mercy"; or else, while adoring the three divine persons: "O most Holy Trinity!"; or while invoking the Queen of Heaven: "Show that you are Mother." Finally, on December 2, which was a Friday, having his eyes bathed in tears and tenderly attached to his crucifix, he pronounced these words: "I have hope in you, my Lord, and I am assured that I will never be confounded." And, at the same time, filled with a heavenly joy that appeared on his face, he gently rendered his spirit around two o'clock in the afternoon. This was in 1552, in the forty-sixth year of his age.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

Saint Francis Xavier was buried on the Sunday following his death. His body was placed in a sufficiently large crate, in the Chinese manner, and this crate was filled with quicklime, so that, the flesh being consumed sooner, the bones could be taken to Goa. On February 17, 1553, the coffin was opened to see if the flesh had been consumed; but, when the lime was removed from the face, it was found fresh and rosy, like that of a man sleeping peacefully. The body was also very firm and without any sign of corruption. To be more certain, a little flesh was cut near the knee, and blood flowed out. The lime had not damaged the priestly vestments in which he had been buried either. The holy body exhaled an odor sweeter and more pleasant than that of the most exquisite perfumes. It was placed on the ship and carried to Malacca, where they arrived on March 22. The inhabitants of this city received it with the greatest respect. The plague, which had been wreaking havoc there for some weeks, ceased suddenly. The body of the holy missionary was buried in the common cemetery. Having been found fresh and whole the following August, it was transported to Goa and deposited in the church of the College of Saint Paul on March 15, 1554. Several miraculous healings occurred on this occasion.

In 1612, when they wished to detach the right arm from the body—which was still fresh, flexible, and colored—to send it to Rome, they encountered great difficulties; finally, the Saint, yielding to the supplications of those present, presented this arm himself to the surgeon, and, immediately upon the first incision, blood flowed as abundantly as if the body had been full of life! Cloths were soaked in it, which the Fathers of Goa sent to Philip IV, King of Spain, and some was collected in a vial that was sent with the arm to the House in Rome. The hand was divided between the colleges of Cochin, Malacca, and Macao. The ship carrying these holy relics to Europe was encountered and pursued by corsairs; it was about to be overtaken when the captain cried out: "Carry the arm of the holy Father to the topmast! It will put the pirates to flight." The order was executed, and the sea-rovers turned about, sailed away at full speed, and appeared no more.

Of these precious relics, the arm has remained in Rome, and the vial of blood is at the Professed House in Paris. The court of Rome, solicited by the sovereigns of Japan and the King of Portugal to proceed with the canonization of Francis Xavier, examined his cause, recognized twenty-four legally proven re-integrations, and eighty-eight brilliant miracles performed during the life of the illustrious Saint; a bull of Pope Paul V, dated October 25, 1605, declared him Blessed. He was canonized by Gregory XV on March 12, 1621, with all the ordinary ceremoni es; but the Grégoire XV Pope who elevated the congregation to the rank of a regular order in 1621. death of Gregory XV delayed the publication of the bull, which was issued by Urban VIII, his successor, under the date of August 6, 1623.

In 1670, by a decree of June 14, Pope Clement X fixed the feast of Saint Francis Xavier on December 3, and ordered, by the same decree, that his office would be of double rite for the whole Church.

Since the death of our Saint, the number of resurrections obtained by the invocation of his merits—recognized by the court of Rome, joined to the acts of canonization, whether before or after the publication of the bull—amounted, in 1715, to the enormous figure of twenty-seven, four of which had been obtained in recent years.

It would be difficult to say in which Catholic country this Saint is not invoked with ardent devotion; everywhere, numerous miracles due to his intercession are published.

They multiplied perhaps even more than elsewhere at the castle of Xavier. The room in which he was born was turned into a chapel, and pilgrims flocked there. Navarre chose him as its patron, and, even today, all Navarrese give the name Xavier to their children at baptism, and pilgrimages are still numerous to this chapel, opened to the public by the descendants of our Saint's family. All have preserved, with religious respect, this noble manor, illustrated by such glorious memories. The castle of Xavier is still what it was in 1524, when Don Francisco left it forever... The chapel of the noble family has remained what it was in the time when the happy and sad mother of the great apostle of the Orient went there to draw the strength to thank God for so much suffering and happiness.

In 1744, by order of King John IV, the Archbishop of Goa and the Marquis of Castel-Nuovo, Viceroy of the Indies, accompanied by all the great dignitaries, visited the remains of Saint Francis Xavier and verified, with all the required formalities, the perfect preservation of his body. Pope Benedict XIV, seeing the countless miracles obtained every day through his merits, declared him protector of the Orient by a brief of February 24, 1747.

In 1762, Father Cicala, of the Congregation of the Lazarists, attended the exposition of the relics of the great apostle on February 10, 11, and 12. He wrote that the gathering of the people had been so considerable that year that it surpassed everything seen in thirty years in their eagerness to come and visit the holy tomb. People had flocked there from all parts of the Indies. The coffin, eight feet long, two feet high, and closed by three locks, was opened in the presence of the Bishop of Cochin, administrator of the diocese of Goa, the entire clergy, all the religious Orders, the Viceroy, and all the great dignitaries and magistrates. The body of the Saint was entirely covered with a veil of silk fabric which was removed, and all those present were able to contemplate what remained of the great apostle of the Orient. He was dressed in priestly vestments; his chasuble, a gift from the Queen of Portugal and bordered by her own hand, was in the freshest condition. The body did not have the slightest sign of corruption; but it no longer had the appearance of life it had retained for more than a century. "The skin," wrote Father Cicala, "the skin, and the flesh which is dried out, is totally united with the bones; one sees a beautiful white on the face; it lacks only the right arm which is in Rome, and two toes of the right foot, as well as the intestines." The feet, in particular, have been preserved in the greatest beauty.

A fragment of the right arm had been granted to the college that the Society of Jesus had established in Macao; but under English influence, or rather domination, the Jesuit college was transformed into a barracks; only the church was preserved. In 1824, an imprudence by the soldiers set fire to the barracks; the relief efforts were poorly directed, the fire devoured the buildings, reached the church, and left only ruins... We are mistaken: in the midst of this great and deplorable destruction, a striking miracle was noted: only four statues had been respected by the flames; only four statues had remained standing, and all four perfectly intact: they were those of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Francis Xavier, Saint Francis Borgia, and Saint Aloysius Gonzaga.

Numerous relics of the Martyrs of Japan disappeared in this disaster... That of Saint Francis Xavier alone was saved! Today, the mummy can still be seen, dressed in the costume the Saint wore during his lifetime. The face is rosy, a few gray hairs adorn the temples, the eyeball protrudes under its strongly accentuated arches of thick eyebrows; the nose alone seems to have suffered a little. Formerly, this holy relic was exposed without the precaution of putting it in a glass case; a lady, too fervent, detached one of the Saint's toes with a bite; since that time, precautions have had to be taken so that such acts would not be repeated.

We could cite even more recent facts, attesting that the power of the merits of the illustrious apostle is far from being weakened. In Belgium, an association for the conversion of fishermen was formed under the patronage of Saint Francis Xavier, and this association obtains numerous miracles of conversion. Who does not know the good being done by an association of another kind, founded in Paris for workers, under the same patronage and the same invocation? And who does not know the marvelous and ever-growing progress of that of the Propagation of the Faith, also placed under his protection?

The tomb of Saint Francis Xavier having been opened in Goa in 1859, the body of the Saint was found intact and as well preserved as the day after his death.

This account is by Father Giry. We have completed it with the Revue catholique de Louvain, 1859. — Cf. Histoire du Saint, by Daurignac.

ARCHICONFRATERNITY OF THE SACRED HEART OF MARY.