St. Francis Xavier
Patron of missionaries and those far from home
- Feast day
- December 3
- Origin
- Navarre, Spain; India and Japan
- Era
- 16th century
- Order
- Society of Jesus
- Canonised
- 1622
About the saint
Francis Xavier was a Navarrese nobleman studying in Paris when he shared rooms with Ignatius of Loyola, who wore him down with the question, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?" He became one of the first seven Jesuits in 1534.
Sent east in 1541, he spent a decade in India, the Moluccas and Japan, baptising tens of thousands, learning languages badly and preaching anyway, and writing letters home that fired a century of missionary vocations.
He died in 1552 on the island of Shangchuan, within sight of China, waiting for a boat that never came. He is co-patron of the missions with Thérèse of Lisieux.
Works
Letters from the East
His correspondence from India, the Moluccas and Japan, widely circulated in Europe.
Read it →
Documented miracles
The gift of tongues reported in India
Contemporaries reported that he was understood by peoples whose languages he had not learned.
India and the Moluccas, 1540s
Incorrupt body
His body, buried in quicklime, was found intact months later and remains enshrined in Goa, where it is displayed every ten years.
Goa, from 1554