In every age since Christ charged the Apostles to go and preach to all nations there have been saintly and heroic men who have journeyed to far lands in order to bring new peoples into the Christian fold. Among those who labored most zealously was the Jesuit, Francis Xavier, named by Pope Pius X as official patron of foreign missions and of all work for spreading the faith. The first great missionary to the Orient in modern times, Xavier planted Christianity in western and southern India, in then uncharted islands of the Indian Ocean, and in Japan. 

       Xavier was born in 1506. His birthplace was the castle of Xavier, near Pampeluna, Spain not far from the French border. The family was highly placed. Francis was the youngest of a large family, and special attention was given to his education. At the University of Paris he was influenced by a fellow student, Ignatius Loyola, a former soldier who was fifteen years his senior. Filled with a compelling desire to save souls, Loyola had drawn around him a little band of seven men who, in 1534, formed themselves into the Society of Jesus, dedicated to the service of God. With his companions he was ordained to the priesthood three years later in Venice. 

       "Francis, with the possible exception of St. Paul, was the greatest of all Christian missionaries. He traveled thousands of miles to the most inaccessible places under the most harrowing conditions. His converts are estimated to have been in the hundreds of thousands; and his missionary impact in the East endured for centuries. Working with inadequate funds, little co-operation, and often actively opposed, he lived as the natives and won them to Christianity by the fervor of his preaching, the example of his life, and his concern for them. His miracles are legion, and his conversions are all the more remarkable in view of the fact that, contrary to a belief long held, he did not have the gift of tongues but worked through interpreters. He was called the ‘Apostle of the Indies’ and ‘the Apostle of Japan,’ was canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV." (Dictionary of Saints) His feast day is December 3.