He was a founder of the Jesuits who evangelized as far as Japan.
Indian Catholics pray at the Holy Name Cathedral in Mumbai, India, on March 15, 2013. Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope March 13, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium. He chose the name Francis, associating himself with the humble 13th-century Italian preacher who lived a life of poverty. It is also seen as an associated with St. Francis Xavier, a founder of the Jesuit order of which Bergoglio is a member and whose feast day was March 12. Xavier is buried in India, where he evangelized in the 16th century.
Much has been written about the choice of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina’s choice of Francis as his papal name on March 13. Writers have tended to associate it more with Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order who, in his youth, was not without compassion but who favored the pursuit of pleasure over scholarly pursuits.
But perhaps equal weight should be given to St. Francis Xavier, a rather serious youth who became one of the founders of the Jesuit order.
Bergoglio, whose father emigrated to South America from Italy, entered the Jesuits at 22, went on to teach literature, psychology and philosophy, and later theology, in Germany. He speaks Spanish, German and Italian.
While noting Bergoglio’s strict adherence to Catholic doctrine on the issues of marriage and abortion, the National Catholic Reporter in its March 3 profile by John L. Allen Jr. noted the then cardinal “has shown deep compassion for the victims of HIV-AIDS; in 2001, he visited a hospice to kiss and wash the feet of 12 AIDS patients.”
“Only someone who has encountered mercy, who has been caressed by the tenderness of mercy, is happy and comfortable with the Lord,” the profile quoted Bergoglio as saying in 2001.
Like his predecessor Benedict, the new pope has been an advocate of the late Rev. Luigi Giussani’s Movement of Communion and Liberation, with its foundation based on a sort of spiritual clarity derived from the correlation of truth and beauty, which will perhaps factor into Bergoglio’s stated focus on papal evangelization.
The Reporter quotes Bergoglio as recently saying about the Church’s need to evangelize:
“It’s true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that’s sick because it’s self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former.”
Francis Xavier, born in Span in 1506, studied and taught in Paris where he made vows to the newly-forming Society of Jesus, and then went to Venice where he administered to the sick. He was eventually asked by the King of Portugal to evangelize the people of the East Indies.
Of his early efforts, the online Catholic Encyclopedia writes that Francis, after arriving in Goa, India, in 1542, spent his first five months “preaching and ministering to the sick in the hospitals. He would go through the streets ringing a little bell and inviting the children to hear the word of God. When he had gathered a number, he would take them to a certain church and would there explain the catechism to them.”
Xavier did missionary work as far as Japan and had plans to evangelize in China but died en route to that country in 1552. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes him as “the greatest missionary since the time of the Apostles.” He was canonized in on March 12, 1622.
Sickness, imprisonment, a trip to Rome and a break with his merchant-minded father seemed to have contributed to the spiritual growth of Francis of Assisi, who also was a great evangelizer and believer in a vowed life of poverty.
Of the early Franciscans under Francis, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, “The wide world was their cloister; sleeping in haylofts, grottos, or church porches, they toiled with the labourers in the fields, and when none gave them work they would beg.”
Xavier’s early vision and continuous missionary travels only further strengthened his early spiritual commitment.
It is likely Francis I, in embarking on his global evangelization and in addressing the Church’s accountability on numerous levels, will leave his own legacy, one influenced in part by both of these Francises.
Related:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/papabile-day-men-who-could-be-pope-13
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06233b.htm