Venite Prandete

  ST FRANCIS XAVIER FEAST DAY - 3rd DECEMBER Frances Xavier was born at the family castle of Xavier of Basque nobility. His father was Minister of Finance to King John III of Navarre. The family castle is today in possession of the Jesuit order. In 1525 he went to Paris to study. In 1529 another student, also a Basque, was assigned to room with him. Ignatius Loyola, a former soldier, had undergone a profound religious conversion and was gathering a group of men who shared his ideals. In 1529, Francis was awarded his Master’s degree and went on to teach philosophy at the University of Paris. In 1534 he and several other young men made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. He started his studies in theology that same year and was ordained on 24 June 1537. Pope Paul III approved the formation of the order of the Society of Jesus in 1540 and in that same year Ignatius chose Francis as the first Jesuit missionary to the Portuguese East Indies. He left Lisbon with full powers of a Nu...

  THE JESUITS IN JAPAN AND THEIR LEGACY OF TEMPURA Jesuit priests Francis Xavier, Cosme de Torres and brother Juan Fernandez arrived in Kagoshima, Kyushu, Japan on the Feast of the Assumption, 1549. With the consent of the Daimyo, they preached on the streets of Kagoshima, using a catechism written by St Francis and translated into Japanese by their companion, Anjiro. St Francis Xavier departed Japan in 1551 to bring the Jesuit mission to China, following which the Japanese mission fell under the leadership of Father de Torres. The success of the Jesuits in converting large numbers of Japanese people, however, aroused much animosity on the part of the Buddhist monks. Father de Torres debated with learned members of the Buddhist community, which were recorded by Brother Fernandez, basing his arguments on reason, believing that it would be highly effective against the Japanese who were, as he said, "led by reason just as well as and even more willingly than Spaniards." He espec...

THE HIDDEN CATHOLICS OF JAPAN THE JESUITS AND THEIR LEGACY "Arrival of a Portuguese Ship". On St Patrick’s Day 1865, Father Bernard Petitjean, a priest of the Societe des Missions Etrangeres, was in the chapel he had constructed and dedicated to the Japanese martyrs in Nagasaki, Japan, when he was visited by a group of Japanese men and women. From the time of his arrival in Japan until that day in March 1865, Father Petitjean had had no visitors. At that time in Japan, during the Meiji Restoration, foreigners had been granted access to the country after two centuries of isolation. However, all contact by native Japanese with foreigners, especially missionaries, was strictly forbidden under threat of execution - conversion by a Japanese to Christianity was a capital offense and even a conversation with a priest was illegal. “But here, standing before him are these 15 people, looking very frightened and not a little unsure of themselves . . .” An article in the Japan Times, ...