By Marcellus D’Souza

The Moghuls invaded Sambhaji's kingdom, forcing him to cut short his conquering spree. Consequently, the city of Goa was saved. This was considered by all as a miracle of St Francis Xavier. It is from this time that people of Goa gradually started revering St Francis Xavier as Goencho Saib or protector of Goa.

The title of Goencho Saib is very old. It was not conferred by anybody in particular. But it has some links with the island of Zunvear (St Estevam).
On the night of November 24, 1683, Sambhaji entered Zunvear via Ponda through Tonca with an army of 20,000 soldiers. He captured the fort of St Estevam by killing the guards, and after taking hold of the entire village, set its church on fire.

He then started marching towards the city of Old Goa after crossing the Ramachi Tar at Dhauji. Viceroy, Count of Alvor, Dom Francisco de Tavora, fearing the worst would take place, placed his sceptre (sword) and his letters patent in the hands of St. Francis Xavier having opened the casket. The Count prayed frequently to save Old Goa from being conquered.

Francis Xavier was instrumental in the establishment of Christianity in India, the Malay Archipelago, and Japan. Modern scholars estimated that he baptized some 30,000 converts during his lifetime.

Born on April 7, 1506 in Castle, near Sangüesa, Navarre, Spain he was canonised March 12, 1622. In Paris in 1534 he pronounced his vows as one of the first seven members of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, under the leadership of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Francis Xavier was ordained priest on June 24, 1537.
Having for more than a year sought passage to the Holy Land in vain, the seven, along with fresh recruits, went to Rome to put themselves at the disposal of the pope.

Meanwhile, as a result of their preaching and care of the sick throughout central Italy, they had become so popular that many Catholic princes sought their services. One of these was King John III of Portugal, who desired diligent priests to minister to the Christians and to evangelize the peoples in his new Asian dominions. When illness prevented one of the two originally chosen for the task from departing, Ignatius designated Francis as his substitute.

The next day, March 15, 1540, Francis left Rome for the Indies, travelling first to Lisbon. In the following fall, Pope Paul III formally recognized the followers of Ignatius as a religious order, the Society of Jesus.

Francis disembarked in Goa, the centre of Portuguese activity in the East, on May 6, 1542; his companion had remained behind to work in Lisbon. Much of the next three years he spent on the southeastern coast of India among the simple, poor pearl fishers, the Paravas.

About 20,000 of them had accepted baptism seven years before, chiefly to secure Portuguese support against their enemies; since then, however, they had been neglected. Using a small catechism he had translated into the native Tamil with the help of interpreters, Francis travelled tirelessly from village to village instructing and confirming them in their faith. His evident goodness and the force of his conviction overcame difficulties of verbal communication. Shortly afterward the Macuans on the southwestern coast indicated their desire for baptism, and after brief instructions he baptized 10,000 of them in the last months of 1544. He anticipated that the schools he planned and Portuguese pressure would keep them constant in the faith.

In the fall of 1545, news of opportunities for Christianity attracted him to the Malay Archipelago. Following several months of evangelization among the mixed population of the Portuguese commercial centre at Malacca (now Melaka, Malaysia), he moved on to found missions among the Malays and the headhunters in the Spice Islands (Moluccas). In 1548 he returned to India, where more Jesuits had since arrived to join him. In Goa the College of Holy Faith, founded several years previously, was turned over to the Jesuits, and Francis began to develop it into a centre for the education of native priests and catechists for the diocese of Goa, which stretched from the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa, to China.

Francis’s eyes, however, were now fixed on a land reached only five years before by Europeans: Japan. His conversations in Malacca with Anjiro, a Japanese man deeply interested in Christianity, had shown that this people was cultured and sophisticated. On August 15, 1549, a Portuguese ship bearing Francis, the newly baptized Anjiro, and several companions entered the Japanese port of Kagoshima.

His first letter from Japan, which was to be printed more than 30 times before the end of the century, revealed his enthusiasm for the Japanese as, “the best people yet discovered.” He grew conscious of the need to adapt his methods. His poverty that had so won the Paravas and Malays often repelled the Japanese, so he abandoned it for studied display when this was called for. In late 1551, having received no mail since his arrival in Japan, Francis decided to return temporarily to India, leaving to the care of his companions about 2,000 Christians in five communities.

Back in India, administrative affairs awaited him as the superior of the newly erected Jesuit Province of the Indies. Meanwhile, he had come to realize that the way to the conversion of Japan lay through China; it was to the Chinese that the Japanese looked for wisdom. He never reached China, however. On December 3, 1552, Francis died of fever on the island of Sancian (Shangchuan, off the Chinese coast) as he attempted to secure entrance to the country, then closed to foreigners.

Research has shown that he always provided for the continuing pastoral care of the communities he founded and did not abandon them after baptism as some critics maintained. In fact, many of his own efforts were spent instructing those baptized hastily by others.

The areas he evangelized in India have remained Catholic to the present day. Vigorous and prolonged persecution in the 17th century did destroy the missions he founded in the Moluccas and Japan but only after thousands had died as martyrs.

Francis Xavier died on December 3, 1552 in Sancian [now Shangchuan] Island, China at the young age of 47-years. Even before his death, Francis Xavier was considered a saint, and he has been formally venerated as such by the Catholic church since 1622. In 1927 he was named patron of all missions.

As the lyrics of the hymn for St Francis Xavier or ‘Goencho Saib’ says, “Besanv ghal, Saiba xharar Gõychea, Samballun sodankal gopant tujea…” without referring to any creed, we implore the saint to protect the whole of Goa in his embrace.