Francis Xavier (born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta; formerly de Jasso y de Xabier; 7 April 1506 – 3 December 1552), venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Navarrese cleric and missionary. He co-founded the Society of Jesus and, as a representative of the Portuguese Empire, led the first Christian mission to Japan.
Born in the town of Xavier, Kingdom of Navarre, he was a companion of Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, Paris in 1534. He led extensive missionary work across Asia, primarily within the Portuguese Empire in the East, and played a significant role in the evangelization of early modern India, particularly through his activities in Portuguese India. In 1546, Francis Xavier wrote to King John III of Portugal proposing measures to strengthen the Christian faith in Goa. Some historians interpret this letter as a request for the establishment of the Goan Inquisition, while others contend that he instead called for the appointment of a special minister dedicated solely to promoting Christianity in Goa.
As a representative of the King of Portugal, he was the first major Christian missionary to venture into Borneo, the Maluku Islands, Japan, and other areas. In those areas, struggling to learn the local languages and in the face of opposition, he had less success than he had enjoyed in India. Xavier also extended his mission to Ming China, where he died on Shangchuan Island.
He was beatified by Pope Paul V on 25 October 1619 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on 12 March 1622. In 1624, he was made co-patron of Navarre. Known as the "Apostle of the Indies", "Apostle of the Far East", "Apostle of China" and "Apostle of Japan", he is considered to be one of the greatest missionaries since Paul the Apostle. In 1927, Pope Pius XI published the decree Apostolicorum in Missionibus naming Francis Xavier, along with Thérèse of Lisieux, co-patron of all foreign missions. He is now co-patron saint of Navarre, along with Saint Fermin. The "Day of Navarre" marks the anniversary of Francis Xavier's death, on 3 December.
Francis Xavier was born in the Castle of Xavier, in the Kingdom of Navarre, on 7 April 1506 into an influential noble family. He was the youngest son of Don Juan de Jasso y Atondo, Lord of Idocín, president of the Royal Council of the Kingdom of Navarre, and seneschal of the Castle of Xavier, a doctor in law by the University of Bologna, belonging to a prosperous noble family of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, later privy counsellor and finance minister to King John III of Navarre.
His mother was Doña María de Azpilcueta y Aznárez, sole heiress to the Castle of Xavier, related to the theologian and philosopher Martín de Azpilcueta. His brother Miguel de Jasso, later known as Miguel de Javier, became Lord of Xavier and Idocín at the death of his parents, a direct ancestor of the Counts of Javier. Basque and Romance were his two mother tongues.
In 1512, Ferdinand, King of Aragon and regent of Castile, invaded Navarre, initiating a war that lasted over 18 years. In 1515, Francis's father died when Francis was only nine years old. In 1516, Francis's brothers participated in a failed Navarrese-French attempt to expel the Spanish invaders from the kingdom. The Spanish Governor, Cardinal Cisneros, confiscated the family lands, demolished the outer wall, the gates, and two towers of the family castle, and filled in the moat. The height of the keep was reduced by half. Only the family residence inside the castle was left. In 1522, one of Francis's brothers participated with 200 Navarrese nobles in dogged but failed resistance against the Castilian Count of Miranda in Amaiur, Baztan, the last Navarrese territorial position south of the Pyrenees.
In 1525, Francis went to study in Paris at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, University of Paris, where he spent the next eleven years. In the early days he acquired some reputation as an athlete and a high-jumper.
In 1529, Francis shared lodgings with his friend Pierre Favre. A new student, Ignatius of Loyola, came to room with them. At 38, Ignatius was much older than Pierre and Francis, who were both 23 at the time. Ignatius convinced Pierre to become a priest, but was unable to convince Francis, who had aspirations of worldly advancement. At first, Francis regarded the new lodger as a joke and was sarcastic about his efforts to convert students.
When Pierre left their lodgings to visit his family and Ignatius was alone with Francis, he was able to slowly break down Francis's resistance. According to most biographies Ignatius is said to have posed the question: "What will it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" However, according to James Broderick such method is not characteristic of Ignatius and there is no evidence that he employed it at all.
In 1530, Francis received the degree of Master of Arts, and afterwards taught Aristotelian philosophy at the Collège de Beauvais, University of Paris.
On 15 August 1534, seven students met in a crypt beneath the Church of Saint Denis (now Saint Pierre de Montmartre), on the hill of Montmartre, overlooking Paris. They were Francis, Ignatius of Loyola, Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Laínez, Nicolás Bobadilla from Spain, Peter Faber from Savoy, and Simão Rodrigues from Portugal. They made private vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the Pope, and also vowed to go to the Holy Land to convert infidels. Francis began his study of theology in 1534 and was ordained on 24 June 1537.
In 1539, after long discussions, Ignatius drew up a formula for a new religious order, the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). Ignatius's plan for the order was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540.
In 1540, King John III of Portugal had Pedro Mascarenhas, Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See, request Jesuit missionaries to spread the faith in his new possessions in India, where the king believed that Christian values were eroding among the Portuguese. After successive appeals to the Pope asking for missionaries for the East Indies under the Padroado agreement, John III was encouraged by Diogo de Gouveia, rector of the Collège Sainte-Barbe, to recruit the newly graduated students who had established the Society of Jesus.
Ignatius promptly appointed Nicholas Bobadilla and Simão Rodrigues. At the last moment, however, Bobadilla became seriously ill. With some hesitance and uneasiness, Ignatius asked Francis to go in Bobadilla's place. Thus, Francis Xavier began his life as the first Jesuit missionary almost accidentally.
Leaving Rome on 15 March 1540, in the Ambassador's train, Francis took with him a breviary, a catechism, and De institutione bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum (Instructions for a Virtuous Life According to the Examples of the Saints) by Croatian humanist Marko Marulić, a Latin book that had become popular in the Counter-Reformation. According to a 1549 letter of F. Balthasar Gago from Goa, it was the only book that Francis read or studied. Francis reached Lisbon in June 1540 and, four days after his arrival, he and Rodrigues were summoned to a private audience with King John and Queen Catherine.
Francis Xavier was the first Jesuit missionary in Asia. He devoted much of his life to missions in Asia, mainly in four centres: Malacca, Amboina and Ternate (in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia), Japan, and off-shore China. His growing information about new places indicated to him that he had to go to what he understood were centres of influence for the whole region. China loomed large from his days in India. Japan was particularly attractive because of its culture. For him, these areas were interconnected; they could not be evangelised separately.
Francis Xavier left Lisbon on 7 April 1541, his thirty-fifth birthday, along with two other Jesuits and the new viceroy Martim Afonso de Sousa, on board the Santiago. As he departed, Francis was given a brief from the pope appointing him apostolic nuncio to the East. From August until March 1542 he remained in Portuguese Mozambique, and arrived in Goa, then the capital of Portuguese India, on 6 May 1542, thirteen months after leaving Lisbon.