(Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta:
Castle of Xavier, 1506 – Island of Sancian, China, 1522). Spanish missionary. While
studying philosophy and theology in Paris he met Ignacio de Loyola, who
recruited him for his project to found a new order. Francis made his first vows
in Paris (1534), or a priest in Venice (1537) and participated in the
foundation of the Society of Jesus in Rome (1539).
Since them he has been consecrated
to missionary activity: in 1541 he was sent to India as a pontifical legacy, with
the mission to evangelize the lands located east of Cape Good Hope, responding
to a request from John III of Portugal. In 1542 in Goa (the capital of
Portuguese India), it carried out intense activity caring for the sick,
visiting prisoners, preaching Christianity, converting natives, negotiating
with local authorities and defending justice against the abuses of settlers.
Its apostolate spread across
southern India, Ceylon, Malacca, the Moluccas Islands and Japan. As he was
preparing to enter China to continue his work, he died of pneumonia at the gates
of Canton. He was canonized in 1622 and declared patron of missions of the
Catholic Church.
Biography:
Francisco de Jasso was the youngest
son of Juan de Jasso y Atondo, president of the Royal Council of Navarre, and
María de Azpilicueta y Aznárez, head of the lordship of Javier, defenders of
the cause of Juan de Albert in front of Ferdinand II the Catholic in the war
that determined the annexation of Navarre to the Crown of Castile (1512-1515). After
the death of his father (1515) and the demolition of the towers and walls of
Javier’s castle by order of Cardinal Cisneros (1516) as a result of the support
given by his brothers Juan and Miguel to the uprising in favour of the
dethroned Navarra king, Francisco Javier oriented towards the ecclesiastical
career and the cultivation of the humanities, which he studied in Leyre and
Pamplona.
In 1525, probably already acquired
the tonsure, he moved to Paris to complete his training; he entered as an
intern at the College of Santa Barbara, where he made friends with Pedro Fabro
and Ignacio de Loyola. In 1530 he graduated from as a teacher in the arts and
went on to teach philosophy with the position of regent professor at
Dormans-Beauvais College, while studying theology. In order to acquire ecclesiastical
benefits, in 1531 he requested in 1531 the council of Pamplona to grant a canonja
, claiming his status as a Navarra cleric and his degree in arts.
However, his relationship with
Ignacio de Loyola, who intended to attract him to the project of founding a new
religious order, as well as his displeasure with the university environment and
the impression caused by the death of his mother and sister, which took place at
that time, determined Francisco Javier to abandon his promotional claims within
the ecclesiastical establishment. Together with Ignacio de Loyola and five
other comrades, gathered in the Parisian chapel of Montmatre, on August 14,1534
he vowed vows of chastity and poverty, of life consecrated to the apostolate
and of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or, in the event that the latter was not
possible, to make himself available to the Pope.
In 1537 he moved to Venice, where he
met with his companions in order to travel to Rome to obtain the papal blessing
before starting his pilgrimage; during his staying in Venice he received news
of the concession of the requested cononja, to which he renounced, and the
beginning of the war between Constantinople and Venice, which meant the
indefinite delay of the trip to the Holy Land. Ordained a priest on June 24 of
that year, he devoted himself to preaching in Bologna until his departure to
Rome, where Francis and his companions met with Paul III and definitively abandoned
their pilgrimage purposes.
During their stay at the Holy See
they managed the foundation of a new religious order, the Society of Jesus, to
which the Pope granted his verbal approval in September 1539. That year Ignacio
de Loyola learned that Jonh III of Portugal asked missionaries to march to
preach Christianity in his possessions in the East Indies and entrusted the
task to Fracis Xavier, who in March 1540 left for the Portuguese court to
organize the expedition, with the title of pontifical legacy for all lands
located east of the Cape of Good Hope.
Started the trip in Abril 1541, he
arrived in Goa, the capital of Portuguese possessions in India, thirteen months
later. He carried out an active evangelizing work in this city, especially
since the foundation of the school-seminar of Santa Fe for native priests, and
of dedication to the sick and prisoners. In September 1542 he organized a
missionary expedition to the coast of Pesqueria, in southeastern India, to
preach Christian doctrine among the villages; established a Christian community
and provided it with a catechism in the indigenous language. After that, the
evangelization of Travancor and Ceylon, Madra and Malaca and the Moluccas
Islands began. Francis Xavier administered baptism to thousands of natives,
overcome the opposition of the Brahmins and established a assiduous correspondence
with the members of the Society of Jesus in Rome, whose news, to which his
reputation as taumaturgo gave rise to numerous missionary vocations among his
companions.
After a new stay in India and
Malacca, dedicated to reorganizing the established missions and providing them
with operations rules, he went to evangelize Japan, when he arrive in 1549; he
preached for two years in Kagoshima, Hirado, Yamaguchi and Bungo, establishing
favorable contacts for his work with the Japanese Daymians or feudal governors,
although the opposition of the Buddhist monks greatly hindered his activity, in
the face of the few conservations achieved in Japan, it was persuaded that to
succeed in its company it was necessary to evangelize China previously, since
it considered that the Japanese had assimilated the culture of this empire and
that, therefore, the example of Christianity in China would exert decisive
influence on Japan.
Claimed by the missionary
communities of India, he returned to Goa in 1551, where he began the necessary
procedures to organize his intended trip to China, hindered by the prohibition
in this empire over the entry of foreigners into his territory. After his
appointment as a provincial of India, which had been constituted as the
independent Jesuit province of Portugal, he left for China with a Portuguese
embassy in April 1552, but had to stop in Malaca, where he spent two months
trying to overcome the resistance that Governor Alvaro de Ataide opposed the
project.
He finally reprimanded the trip to
the island of Sancayan, where death occurred before the Chinese reed arrived that
was to transport him to Canton. His remains were transferred to Goa in 1554,
where his cult spread quickly. At the beginning of the 17th century
the process of his beatification began, proclaimed by Paul V on October 25,
1619; appointed patron of Navarre in 1621, on March 12 of the following year he
was canonized by Gregory XV, together with Saint Teresa of Jesus and Saint Ignatius
of Loyola. Pius X declared him patron of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda
Fide in 1904, and Pius XI patron of all missions in 1927. His party is
celebrated on December 3.
