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MATTRESS
A Character
Sketch of
Xavier
Xavier’s big challenge was
to promote spirituality in
an environment where the
Portuguese were deeply
involved in amassing wealth
„ TEOTONIO R. DE SOUZA
T
here is a monumental 4-vol-
ume study of Saint Xavierand
his times by the German Jesuit
Georg Schurhammer who start-
ed his life as a young religious
in Bombay at St. Mary’s and vowed to dedi-
cate his life to study the Saint in exchange of
hiscurefromtuberculosisafterapilgrimage
to the feet of St Francis Xavier in 1910 on the
occasion of an extraordinary exposition or-
ganized to mark 400 years of Goa’s conquest
by the Portuguese. Schurhammer became
one of the founders of the Jesuit Historical
Institute in Rome. He dictated the last lines
of the biography on his death bed, making

2. 18
Francis Xavier beneitted from the well-oiled machine of
the Society of Jesus to present his case for sainthood and
to project his image. Joseph Vaz had to thread his way to
sainthood with a slow march, just as he did during his life
in Ceylon, waiting for the arrival of a non-Italian Pope to
beatify him, and a non-European Pope to present him as a
model missionary for non-European Church in our times.
Teotonio R.
de Souza is a
former director of
the Xavier Centre of
Historical Research
(Goa) 1979-1994
and former director
of the 2nd Cycle in
Social, Political and
Economic History
(Universidade
Lusófona) 2001-
2011.
his own the last words of the Saint:
“In thy hands I commend my soul”.
Schurhammer’s Francis Xavier: His
Life, His Times (Rome: Jesuit Histori-
calInstitute,1973-1982)wastranslated
fromtheoriginalGerman(1973)byJo-
sephCostelloe,S.J.Whatwearecalled
to present here almost in a nutshell is
St. Francis Xavier: His Life and Our
Times. This reminds me of a portrait
representingthebustofStFrancisXa-
vier in a wooden polychrome, which
I remember having seen at Bom Je-
sus some decades ago. A distich on
it remained etched in my memory. If
I remember it right, it said: Xaverius
est. Dimidiumcernisquemtotum non
capitorbis [It is Xavier. You see half of
him whom the world cannot hold en-
tire]. It is a formidable task that I am
askedtoperforminthisshortpieceof
writing!
It will not be an exaggeration if I
sum up the personality of St Fran-
cis Xavier as three positive quali-
ties, namely enthusiasm, backed by
trust in God rather than in self; iery
Basque passion and militancy; open-
ness to the world of the Discoveries.
Obviously, all these qualities had
their limitations and required a dy-
namic and cautious response to new
challenges. Despite the tendency, es-
pecially in colonial times, to enhance
a western personality as an unblem-
ished model of virtues, the shortcom-
ings of Francis Xavier have not es-
caped his critics among his admirers,
including my humble self.
Before proceeding to identify a few
of such human shortcomings of the
Saint, it is important to point to the
historic context that brought togeth-
er the founder and his early compan-
ions, the co-founders of the Society
of Jesus in the mid-sixteenth century.
That background is essential to un-
derstand the mentality that shaped
the spirituality of the new Religious
Order, or rather the Society of Jesus as
a special transitional brand that was
diferent from the traditional monas-
tic or mendicant Orders and prepared
the way to later Congregations. The
change was dictated by the new times
of Modernity and Renaissance that
were sweeping Europe.
The Society of Jesus was a fore-
runner of the new European trading
companies with a centralization in
service of mobility. That was visible
in the missionary activity of Francis
Xavier who planted the new Society
of Jesus in Asia. During his one dec-
ade of activity he was constantly on
the move, and his short stays in Goa
do not exceed one year. His mission-
ary trips took him to South India,
Southeast Asia and the Far East. His
longest stay in Goa has been after his
death.
Francis Xavier had arrived in India
backed by the prestige of the new Or-
der, with powers of Papal legate, and
with great personal trust of the Portu-
guese king. To moderate these pow-
ers with self-abnegation was one big
challenge to the spirituality which he
had to project in the world where the
Portuguese were deeply involved in
amassing wealth at all costs.
Francis Xavier wrote to King John
III that his subjects in India were ex-
perts in parsing the verb “to rob” in
all its tenses and moods, and recom-
mended the establishment of the In-
quisition in India to curb the misbe-
havior of the Portuguese who were
thereby neutralizing the missionary
project. He had not anticipated how

3. 19
It will not be an
exaggeration
if I sum up the
personality of St
Francis Xavier
as three positive
qualities, namely
enthusiasm,
backed by trust
in God rather
than in self; iery
Basque passion and
militancy; openness
to the world of the
Discoveries.
the Inquisition would grow and how
many natives would fall victims to its
insatiable power.
While it has become customary
among the modern Hindu funda-
mentalists to berate the evils of the
Goa Inquisition, it may be worth re-
membering that in the midst of the
Portuguese colonial abuses, the tri-
bunal of the Inquisition represented
a relatively praiseworthy model of
justice, as was admitted in a memo-
randum sent to the king of Portugal
by Goa’s natives in December 1642.
ItmaybereadinApp.A.8ofmyMe-
dievalGoa(2009):“Itisimpossiblefor
the people to ind justice in this land,
because of the enemies who are too
powerful. Firstly, there are the vice-
roys who always require more money
for the needs of the State. Secondly,
the Ministers of the Public Exchequer
that keep sending the helpless tax-
payers from one court of justice to
another.Finally,theFathersoftheSo-
ciety of Jesus are the toughest of the

4. 20
From his youthful experiences in Paris he had
witnessed among his colleagues the dangers of
sexual orgies. They had left such a traumatic
impact on his life that he feared contact with
women even in dreams. He believed that God had
granted him a special grace of virginity. Whatever
that means, he put little trust in women.
Fr. Valignano,
who followed
Francis Xavier as
major organizer
of the Asian Jesuit
missions, left on
record that the
spectacular success
of Francis Xavier in
the Fishery coast
was due largely
to a policy of stick
and carrot.
lot, and even the viceroys do not dare
to take them to task. We request Your
Majesty to ind remedy to our ills. We
wish that the Holy Inquisition be en-
trusted with the task of conducting a
secret inquiry into all that has been
exposed in this memorandum, be-
cause no one else can dig into this rot
without fearing reprisals”.
We need to recall that Francis Xa-
vier, like all of us, was a child of his
times. He shared the prejudices of the
modern Europeans about black Afri-
cansandAsian“niggers”,whosesouls
he saw in his dreams falling into the
ires of hell as dry leaves and begged
hisEuropeancolleaguestorushtoIn-
dia in greater numbers to help saving
these souls, rather than wasting time
in university studies.
Francis Xavier was not free from
European white superiority.When he
arrived irst in Japan he wrote to col-
leagues in Europe with a sigh of relief
that after seeing only the “niggers” in
India, he had discovered lighter col-
oured humans. He was of the opin-
ion too that it would be very diicult
to form any Christian community
among the Indians, and even more
diicult to preserve it, except within
the range of the Portuguese gunboats.
Fr. Valignano, who followed Fran-
cis Xavier as major organizer of the
Asian Jesuit missions, left on record
that the spectacular success of Fran-
cisXavierintheFisherycoastwasdue
largely to a policy of stick and carrot.
Francis Xavier and A. Valignano were
both great admirers of the Japanese
culture, and pinned great hopes in
Jesuit activities there and later in Chi-
na. Unlike the Indians whom Francis
Xavier described in letters to Igna-
tius of Loyola as hopeless candidates
for the Society of Jesus, the Japanese
were welcomed into the Society of Je-
sus with alacrity.
Whatever his powers of prediction
may have been during his life-time,
times have shown him wrong in this
regard. The Christianity in Japan
had a chequered growth and reached
near extinction following the Shima-
bara rebellion in 1636, while it lour-
ished in India, and St. Francis Xavier
is “condemned” to keep company to
his “hopeless” Indian “niggers” and
watch thespectacular growth of the
Society of Jesus in India.
His missionary methodology is
summed up in detailed instructions
he left in letters to Francisco Man-
silhas, his Jesuit aide on the Fishery
Coast, and to Fr. Gaspar Barze, whom
he named his successor and superior
in Goa. Much that he advised oth-
ers, he strived to practice in his own
life: Patience, cheerfulness and ever-
readiness to serve the sick, the poor,
the prisoners, and never to stop in
one place. No surprise he was always
in a hurry and was a burn-out in ten
years.
From his youthful experiences in

5. 21
The Christianity
in Japan had a
chequered growth
and reached near
extinctionfollowing
the Shimabara
rebellion in 1636,
while it lourished
in India, and St.
Francis Xavier is
“condemned” to
keep company
to his “hopeless”
Indian “niggers”.
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Paris he had witnessed among his
colleagues the dangers of sexual or-
gies. They had left such a traumatic
impact on his life that he feared con-
tact with women even in dreams. He
believed that God had granted him a
special grace of virginity. Whatever
thatmeans,heputlittletrustinwom-
en. Among the practical instructions
to the provincial-designate before he
left for China, we read: Never blame
a husband in public, even though
he may be at fault, since women are
so indomitable. This is not likely to
cheer the feminists today.
To conclude, I cannot resist com-
paring St. Francis Xavier with the
Goansaint-designateJosephVaz,also
a co-founder, but of a small native re-
ligious congregation of the Oratori-
ans. While everything in the life of St.
Francis Xavier happened on an inter-
continental scale and he could reach
manynations,backedbypoliticaland
military power of the Portuguese, Jo-
seph Vaz served a small nation where
Christianity was under the Calvinist
siege of the Dutch and had to operate
clandestinely, without colonial stage
lights and fanfare.
Francis Xavier beneitted from the
well-oiled machine of the Society of
Jesus to present his case for saint-
hood and to project his image. That
was further enhanced by the power of
the Spanish Hapsburgs who in 1622
were also rulers of Portugal. Their in-
luence in Rome could get four Span-
iards, which included Ignatius of
Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila
and Isidro Labrador raised to the hon-
ours of sainthood on the same day.
Joseph Vaz had to thread his way
to sainthood with a slow march, just
as he did during his life in Ceylon,
waiting for the arrival of a non-Ital-
ian Pope to beatify him, and a non-
European Pope to present him as a
model missionary for non-European
Church in our times. „