Saint Francis Xavier

Francis Xavier was born on 7 April 1506 in the castle of Xavier in the Kingdom of Navarre, the youngest son of a noble family. His father, Juan de Jasso, was president of the royal council of Navarre. When Francis was six, his father lost his property for having fought beside the king of Navarre in a war against the crown of Castile, and he died in 1515. The next year the family fortress was dismantled and the lands confiscated. By the time Francis came of age, the family was ruined, and a career in arms did not appeal to him.

In September 1525 he left his mother and brothers, whom he would never see again, and went to the University of Paris, where he lived at the College of Sainte-Barbe. Many of his companions lived carelessly, but two men stood out for their piety: Peter Faber and Ignatius of Loyola, a Basque who had been thinking for some time about founding a work for the good of the Church. Ignatius, according to the traditional account, pressed Francis with the Gospel question of what it profits a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul. The words took hold of him slowly. In 1534 he was among the first seven companions who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, the beginning of the Society of Jesus.

In 1540 he was sent east as a missionary, traveling as a representative of the King of Portugal. His work centered on Portuguese India, and from there he went to the Maluku Islands, Borneo, and Japan, where he led the first Christian mission. He had to learn local languages and often met opposition, and in the islands and in Japan he had less success than he had known in India.

Xavier was planning to bring the Gospel to China when he fell ill, worn out by sickness and labor. He died on Shangchuan Island, off the Chinese coast, on 3 December 1552, at the age of forty-six.

Pope Paul V beatified him in 1619 and Pope Gregory XV canonized him in 1622. In 1624 he was named co-patron of Navarre, and in 1927 Pope Pius XI declared him, with Thérèse of Lisieux, co-patron of all foreign missions. He is remembered as the Apostle of the Indies and of the Far East.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.