Spanish Jesuit missionary born in Xavier Castle, in Navarre, companion of Ignatius Loyola and considered by the Church to be the Apostle of the Indies and universal patron of the missions. He studied philosophy at the University of Paris, the city where he met Inácio de Loiola, at the Santa Barbara College, with whom he shared a student room. Attracted by the personality of the one who would become the founder of the Society of Jesus, he started to collaborate in its project. Both took vows of poverty and chastity in the church of Montmartre (1534) and then decided to travel to the Holy Land to preach to heretics. It was ordained (1537), two years before the foundation of the Society of Jesus.
Through D. João III, King of Portugal, and without finding partners, left Lisbon alone (1541) to evangelize the Portuguese lands of the Indies, invested with the dignity of a papal legacy. After sailing for a whole year and making a stopover in Madagascar, he arrived in Goa, on the coast. southwestern India, to devote himself to the care of the poor and the sick and to the teaching of doctrine Christian. He was then on the Costa da Pescaria, where he baptized over twenty thousand natives and back to Goa, he went to Malacca and the Moluccas Islands.
In Malacca he baptized a young Japanese man, Anjiro, who motivated him to travel to Kagoshima (1549) for the evangelization of Japan. With two more Jesuits and Anjiro, he began his apostolic work and came into contact with the highest dignitaries in the country and even with the emperor. He then went to China, but after landing he was stricken with pneumonia and died on Sancian Island, later Shangchuan, near Canton. He was canonized by Pope Gregory XV (1622).
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order F - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/francisco-xavier.htm
