St. Francis Xavier

St. Francis Xavier was born on 7 April 1506 at the castle of Xavier in the kingdom of Navarre (in modern Spain), and died on 3 December 1552 on the island of Shangchuan, off the coast of China. A student in Paris with ambitions for worldly success, he was won over by the persistent friendship of Ignatius of Loyola — 'What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?' — and became one of the first companions of the Society of Jesus.

Sent as a missionary to the East, he spent the rest of his life in tireless, heroic labor: preaching, baptizing, and caring for the poor and the sick across India, Sri Lanka, the Malay archipelago, the Spice Islands, and Japan, which he was the first to evangelize, adapting himself to peoples and cultures utterly new to Europe. He is said to have baptized tens of thousands, and he died worn out on the threshold of China, longing to bring the Gospel there. Canonized in 1622, he is honored, together with St. Thérèse of Lisieux, as a principal patron of the missions.