A Navarrese noble became Asia's Jesuit pathfinder
Francis Xavier, born 1506 in Navarre, roomed with Ignatius of Loyola in Paris and joined the first Jesuits' 1534 vows. As Portugal's man in the East he missionized India, tried Japan, and died in 1552—later styled Apostle of the Indies and Far East.
Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta (7 April 1506–3 December 1552) co-founded the Society of Jesus and led the first Christian mission to Japan for the Portuguese Empire. Beatified in 1619 and canonized in 1622, he became co-patron of Navarre in 1624. Titles such as Apostle of the Indies, Far East, China, and Japan place him among the most celebrated missionaries since Paul of Tarsus. He grew up speaking both Basque and Romance, and his father, Don Juan de Jasso y Atondo, had presided over Navarre's Royal Council.
Youngest son of Navarrese nobility at Castle Xavier, he lost his father in 1515 amid Ferdinand of Aragon's invasion of Navarre. From 1525 he spent eleven years at Paris's Collège Sainte-Barbe, winning a reputation as an athlete and high-jumper. In 1529 he lodged with Pierre Favre; Ignatius of Loyola, then thirty-eight to their twenty-three, eventually won Francis from worldly ambitions into priestly vows at Montmartre in 1534. He took his Master of Arts in 1530 and went on to teach Aristotelian philosophy at the Collège de Beauvais.
His Asian fieldwork centered on Portuguese Asia, with notable fruit in India and harder going in Borneo, the Maluku Islands, and Japan as languages and local opposition slowed him. He pushed on toward Ming China and died on Shangchuan Island. His missionary career began almost by accident. In 1540 King John III of Portugal asked for Jesuits to serve his new Indian possessions, and Ignatius chose Nicholas Bobadilla and Simão Rodrigues; when Bobadilla fell seriously ill, Francis went in his place, leaving Rome on 15 March 1540 with a breviary, a catechism, and a moral handbook by the Croatian humanist Marko Marulić.
Source: Francis Xavier
