From: "Ashwini Kumar" X-Originating-Ip: [65.93.8.25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list vediculture@yahoogroups.com; contact vediculture-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list vediculture@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 14:12:14 -0500 Subject: [world-vedic] Saint Francois Xavier-Original Letters and more info Reply-To: vediculture@yahoogroups.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here are some of Saint Francis Xavier's original letters and favor us ! Amen. . . . Now to speak of what I know you are most anxious to hear about the state of religion in India. In this region of Travancore, where I now am, God has drawn very many to the faith of His Son Jesus Christ. In the space of one month I made Christians of more than ten thousand. This is the method I followed. As soon as I arrived in any heathen village where they had sent for me to give them baptism, I gave orders for all, men, women, and children, to be collected in one place. Then, beginning with the first elements of the Christian faith, I taught them there is one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and at the same time, calling on the three divine Persons and one God, I made them each make three times the sign of the Cross; then, putting on a surplice, I began to recite in a loud voice and in their own language the form of the general Confession, the Apostle's Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the , and the . Two years ago I translated all these prayers into the language of the country, and learned them by heart. I recited them slowly so that all of every age and condition followed me in them. Then I began to explain shortly the articles of the Creed and the Ten Commandments in the language of the country. Where the people appeared to me sufficiently instructed to receive baptism, I ordered them all to ask God's pardon publicly for the sins of their past life, and to do this with a loud voice and in the presence of their neighbors still hostile to the Christian religion, in order to touch the hearts of the heathen and confirm the faith of the good. All the heathen are filled with admiration at the holiness of the law of God, and express the greatest shame at having lived so long in ignorance of the true God. They willingly hear about the mysteries and rules of the Christian religion, and treat me, poor sinner as I am, with the greatest respect. Many, however, put away from them with hardness of heart the truth which they well know. When I have done my instruction, I ask one by one all those who desire baptism if they believe without hesitation each of the articles of the faith. All immediately, holding their arms in the form of the Cross, declare with one voice that they believe all entirely. Then at last I baptize them in due form, and I give to each his name written on a ticket. After their baptism the new Christians go back to their houses and bring me their wives and families for baptism. When all are baptized I order all the temples of their false gods to be destroyed and all the idols to be broken in pieces. I can give you no idea of the joy I feel in seeing this done, witnessing the destruction of the idols by the very people who but lately adored them. In all the towns and villages I leave the Christian doctrine in writing in the language of the country, and I prescribe at the same time the manner in which it is to be taught in the morning and evening schools. When I have done all this in one place, I pass to another, and so on successively to the rest. In this way I go all round the country, bringing the natives into the fold of Jesus Christ, and the joy that I feel in this is far too great to be expressed in a letter, or even by word of mouth.... You may judge from this alone, my very dear brothers, what great and fertile harvests this uncultivated field promises to produce. This part of the world is so ready, so teeming with shooting corn, as I may say, that I hope within this very year to make as many as a hundred thousand Christians.... And now what ought you to do when you see the minds of these people so well prepared to receive the seed of the Gospel? May God make known to you His most holy will, and give you at the same time strength and courage to carry it out; and may He in His Providence send as many as possible of you into this country! The least and most lonely of your brothers, Francis >From Cochin, January 27th, 1545. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- (LIV) favor us! Amen. . . . . . . Nearly two hundred miles beyond Molucca there is a region which is called Maurica. Here, many years ago, a great number of the inhabitants became Christians, but having been totally neglected and left, as it were, orphans by the death of the priests who taught them, they have returned to their former barbarous and savage state. It is in every way a land full of perils, and especially to be dreaded by strangers on account of the great ferocity of the natives and the many kinds of poison which it is there common to give in what is eaten and drunk. The fear of this has deterred priests from abroad from going there to help the islanders. I have considered in what great necessity they are, with no one to instruct them or give them the sacraments, and I have come to think that I ought to provide for their salvation even at the risk of my life. I have resolved to go thither as soon as possible, and to offer my life to the risk. Truly I have put all my trust in God, and I wish as much as is in me to obey the precept of our Lord Jesus Christ: "He that will save his life shall lose it; and he that shall lose his life for My sake shall find it."[4] Words easy in thought but not easy in practice. When the hour comes when life must be lost that you may find it in God, when danger of death is on you, and you see plainly that to obey God you must sacrifice life, then, I know not how, it comes to pass that what before seemed a very clear precept is involved in incredible darkness.... It is in such circumstances that we see clearly how great after all our weakness is, how frail and unstable is our human nature here. Many friends of mine have prayed me earnestly not to go amongst so barbarous a people. Afterwards, when they saw they gained nothing by prayers or tears, they brought me each what he thought the best possible antidote against poison of all sorts; but I have unrelentingly sent them all back, lest after burdening myself with medicines, I should have another burden which before I was without, that of fear. I had put all my hope in the protection of Divine Providence, and I thought I ought to be on my guard, lest relying on human aid I should lose something of my trust in God. So I thanked them all and earnestly entreated them to pray God for me, for that no more certain remedy could possibly be found.... >From Amboyna (May, 1546) (H. T. Coleridge, , 1872.) May the grace and charity of Christ our Lord always help and favor us! Amen. It is now the third year since I left Portugal. I am writing to you for the third time, having as yet received only one letter from you, dated February 1542. God is my witness what joy it caused me. I only received it two months ago, later than is usual for letters to reach India, because the vessel which brought it had passed the winter at Mozambique. I and Francis Mancias are now living amongst the Christians of Comorin. They are very numerous, and increase largely every day. When I first came I asked them, if they knew anything about our Lord Jesus Christ? but when I came to the points of faith in detail and asked them what they thought of them, and what more they believed now than when they were Infidels, they only replied that they were Christians, but that as they are ignorant of Portuguese, they know nothing of the precepts and mysteries of our holy religion. We could not understand one another, as I spoke Castilian and they Malabar; so I picked out the most intelligent and well-read of them, and then sought out with the greatest diligence men who knew both languages. We held meetings for several days, and by our joint efforts and with infinite difficulty we translated the Catechism into the Malabar tongue. This I learnt by heart, and then I began to go through all the villages of the coast, calling around me by the sound of a bell as many as I could, children and men. I asembled them twice a day and taught them the Christian doctrine: and thus, in the space of a month, the children had it well by heart. And all the time I kept telling them to go on teaching in their turn whatever they had learnt to their parents, family, and neighbors. Every Sunday I collected them all, men and women, boys and girls, in the church. They came with great readiness and with a great desire for instruction. Then, in the hearing of all, I began by calling on the name of the most holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and I recited aloud the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Creed in the language of the country: they all followed me in the same words, and delighted in it wonderfully. Then I repeated the Creed by myself, dwelling upon each article singly. Then I asked them as to each article, whether they believed it unhesitatingly; and all, with a loud voice and their hands crossed over their breasts, professed aloud that they truly believed it. I take care to make them repeat the Creed oftener than the other prayers; and I tell them that those who believe all that is contained therein are called Christians. After explaining the Creed I go on to the Commandments, teaching them that the Christian law is contained in those ten precepts, and that every one who observes them all faithfully is a good and true Christian and is certain of eternal salvation, and that, on the other hand, whoever neglects a single one of them is a bad Christian, and will be cast into hell unless he is truly penitent for his sin. Converts and heathen alike are astonished at all this, which shows them the holiness of the Christian law, its perfect consistency with itself, and its agreement with reason. As to the numbers who become Christians, you may understand them from this, that it often happens to me to be hardly able to use my hands from the fatigue of baptizing: often in a single day I have baptized whole villages. Sometimes I have lost my voice and strength altogether with repeating again and again the Credo and the other forms. The fruit that is reaped by the baptism of infants, as well as by the instruction of children and others, is quite incredible. These children, I trust heartily, by the grace of God, will be much better than their fathers. They show an ardent love for the Divine law, and an extraordinary zeal for learning our holy religion and imparting it to others. Their hatred for idolatry is marvellous. They get into feuds with the heathen about it, and whenever their own parents practise it, they reproach them and come off to tell me at once. Whenever I hear of any act of idolatrous worship, I go to the place with a large band of these children, who very soon load the devil with a greater amount of insult and abuse than he has lately received of honor and worship from their parents, relations, and acquaintances. The children run at the idols, upset them, dash them down, break them to pieces, spit on them, trample on them, kick them about, and in short heap on them every possible outrage. I had been living for nearly four months in a Christian village, occupied in translating the Catechism. A great number of natives came from all parts to entreat me to take the trouble to go to their houses and call on God by the bedsides of their sick relatives. Such numbers also of sick made their own way to us, that I had enough to do to read a Gospel over each of them. At the same time we kept on with our daily work, instructing the children, baptizing converts, translating the Catechism, answering difficulties, and burying the dead. For my part I desired to satisfy all, both the sick who came to me themselves, and those who came to beg on the part of others, lest if I did not, their confidence in, and zeal for, our holy religion should relax, and I thought it wrong not to do what I could in answer to their prayers. But the thing grew to such a pitch that it was impossible for me myself to satisfy all, and at the same time to avoid their quarrelling among themselves, every one striving to be the first to get me to his own house; so I hit on a way of serving all at once. As I could not go myself, I sent round children whom I could trust in my place. They went to the sick persons, assembled their families and neighbours, recited the Creed with them, and encouraged the sufferers to conceive a certain and well-founded confidence of their restoration. Then after all this, they recited the prayers of the Church. To make my tale short, God was moved by the faith and piety of these children and of the others, and restored to a great number of sick persons health both of body and soul. How good He was to them! He made the very disease of their bodies the occasion of calling them to salvation, and drew them to the Christian faith almost by force! I have also charged these children to teach the rudiments of Christian doctrine to the ignorant in private houses, in the streets, and the crossways. As soon as I see that this has been well started in one village, I go on to another and give the same instructions and the same commission to the children, and so I go through in order the whole number of their villages. When I have done this and am going away, I leave in each place a copy of the Christian doctrine, and tell all those who know how to write to copy it out, and all the others are to learn it by heart and to recite it from memory every day. Every feast day I bid them meet in one place and sing all together the elements of the faith. For this purpose I have appointed in each of the thirty Christian villages men of intelligence and character who are to preside over these meetings, and the Governor, Don Martin Alfonso, who is so full of love for our Society and of zeal for religion, has been good enough at our request to allot a yearly revenue of 4000 gold farlams for the salary of these catechists. He has an immense friendship for ours, and desires with all his heart that some of them should be sent hither, for which he is always asking in his letters to the King. There is now in these parts a very large number of persons who have only one reason for not becoming Christian, and that is that there is no one to make them Christians. It often comes into my mind to go round all the Universities of Europe, and especially that of Paris, crying out everywhere like a madman, and saying to all the learned men there whose learning is so much greater than their charity, "Ah! what a multitude of souls is through your fault shut out of heaven and falling into hell!" Would to God that these men who labor so much in gaining knowledge would give as much thought to the account they must one day give to God of the use they have made of their learning and of the talents entrusted to them! . . . We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and I always apply to them the words of holy David, "from an unholy race and a wicked and crafty man deliver me, O Lord." They are liars and cheats to the very backbone. Their whole study is, how to deceive most cunningly the simplicity and ignorance of the people. They give out publicly that the gods command certain offerings to be made to their temples, which offerings are simply the things that the Brahmins themselves wish for, for their own maintenance and that of their wives, children, and servants. Thus they make the poor folk believe that the images of their gods eat and drink, dine and sup like men, and some devout persons are found who really offer to the idol twice a day, before dinner and supper, a certain sum of money. The Brahmins eat sumptuous meals to the sound of drums, and make the ignorant believe that the gods are banqueting. When they are in need of any supplies, and even before, they give out to the people that the gods are angry because the things they have asked for have not been sent, and that if the people do not take care, the gods will punish them by slaughter, disease, and the assaults of the devils. And the poor ignorant creatures, with the fear of the gods before them, obey them implicitly. These Brahmins have barely a tincture of literature, but they make up for their poverty in learning by cunning and malice. Those who belong to these parts are very indignant with me for exposing their tricks. Whenever they talk to me with no one by to hear them they acknowledge that they have no other patrimony but the idols, by their lies about which they procure their support from the people. They say that I, poor creature as I am, know more than all of them put together. They often send me a civil message and presents, and make a great complaint when I send them all back again. Their object is to bribe me to connive at their evil deeds. So they declare that they are convinced that there is only one God, and that they will pray to Him for me. And I, to return the favor, answer whatever occurs to me, and then lay bare, as far as I can, to the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made them their slaves, their imposture and tricks, and this has induced many to leave the worship of the false gods, and eagerly become Christians. If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ. The heathen inhabitants of the country are commonly ignorant of letters, but by no means ignorant of wickedness. All the time I have been here in this country I have only converted one Brahmin, a virtuous young man, who has now undertaken to teach the Catechism to children. As I go through the Christian villages, I often pass by the temples of the Brahmins, which they call pagodas. One day lately, I happened to enter a pagoda where there were about two hundred of them, and most of them came to meet me. We had a long conversation, after which I asked them what their gods enjoined them in order to obtain the life of the blessed. There was a long discussion amongst them as to who should answer me. At last, by common consent, the commission was given to one of them, of greater age and experience than the rest, an old man, of more than eighty years. He asked me in return, what commands the God of the Christians laid on them. I saw the old man's perversity, and I refused to speak a word till he had first answered my question. So he was obliged to expose his ignorance, and replied that their gods required two duties of those who desired to go to them hereafter, one of which was to abstain from killing cows, because under that form the gods were adored; the other was to show kindness to the Brahmins, who were the worshippers of the gods. This answer moved my indignation, for I could not but grieve intensely at the thought of the devils being worshipped instead of God by these blind heathen, and I asked them to listen to me in turn. Then I, in a loud voice, repeated the Apostles' Creed and the Ten Commandments. After this I gave in their own language a short explanation, and told them what Paradise is, and what Hell is, and also who they are who go to Heaven to join the company of the blessed, and who are to be sent to the eternal punishments of hell. Upon hearing these things they all rose up and vied with one another in embracing me, and in confessing that the God of the Christians is the true God, as His laws are so agreeable to reason. Then they asked me if the souls of men like those of other animals perished together with the body. God put into my mouth arguments of such a sort, and so suited to their ways of thinking, that to their great joy I was able to prove to them the immortality of the soul. I find, by the way, that the arguments which are to convince these ignorant people must by no means be subtle, such as those which are found in the books of learned schoolmen, but must be such as their minds can understand. They asked me again how the soul of a dying person goes out of the body, how it was, whether it was as happens to us in dreams, when we seem to be conversing with our friends and acquaintance? (Ah, how often this happens to me, dearest brothers, when I am dreaming of you!) Was this because the soul then leaves the body? And again, whether God was black or white? For as there is so great a variety of color among men, and the Indians being black themselves, consider their own color the best, they believe that their gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at. To all these questions I was able to reply so as to satisfy them entirely. But when I came to the point at last, and urged them to embrace the religion which they felt to be true, they made that same objection which we hear from many Christians when urged to change their life---that they would set men talking about them if they altered their ways and their religion, and besides, they said that they should be afraid that, if they did so, they would have nothing to live on and support themselves by. I have found just one Brahmin and no more in all this coast who is a man of learning: he is said to have studied in a very famous Academy. Knowing this, I took measures to converse with him alone. He then told me at last, as a great secret, that the students of this Academy are at the outset made by their masters to take an oath not to reveal their mysteries, but that, out of friendship for me, he would disclose them to me. One of these mysteries was that there only exists one God, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, whom men are bound to worship, for the idols are simply images of devils. The Brahmins have certain books of sacred literature which contain, as they say, the laws of God. The masters teach in a learned tongue, as we do in Latin. He also explained to me these divine precepts one by one; but it would be a long business to write out his commentary, and indeed not worth the trouble. Their sages keep as a feast our Sunday. On this day they repeat at different hours this one player: "I adore Thee, O God; and I implore Thy help for ever." They are bound by oath to repeat this prayer frequently, and in a low voice. My friend added, that the law of nature permitted them to have more wives than one, and their sacred books predicted that the time would come when all men should embrace the same religion. After all this he asked me in my turn to explain the principal mysteries of the Christian religion, promising to keep them secret. I replied, that I would not tell him a word about them unless he promised beforehand to publish abroad what I should tell him of the religion of Jesus Christ. He made the promise, and then I carefully explained to him those words of Jesus Christ in which our religion is summed up: "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved." This text, with my commentary on it, which embraced the whole of the Apostles' Creed, he wrote down carefully, as well as the Commandments, on account of their close connection with the Creed. He told me also that one night he had dreamt that he had been made a Christian to his immense delight, and that he had become my brother and companion. He ended by begging me to make him a Christian secretly. But as he made certain conditions opposed to right and justice, I put off his baptism. I don't doubt but that by God's mercy he will one day be a Christian. I charged him to teach the ignorant and unlearned that there is only one God, Creator of heaven and earth; but he pleaded the obligation of his oath, and said he could not do so, especially as he was much afraid that if he did it he should become possessed by an evil spirit.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Source: From: Henry James Coleridge, ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2d Ed., 2 Vols., (London: Burns & Oates, 1890), Vol. I, pp. 151-163; reprinted in William H. McNeil and Mitsuko Iriye, eds., Modern Asia and Africa, Readings in World History Vol. 9, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 4-11. Modern History Sourcebook: St. Francis Xavier: Letter on the Missions, to St. Ignatius de Loyola, 1549 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- May the grace and charity of our Lord Christ always be with us! Amen. My own and only Father in the Heart of Christ, I think that the many letters from this place which have lately been sent to Rome will inform you how prosperously the affairs of religion go on in these parts, through your prayers and the good bounty of God. But there seem to be certain things which I ought myself to speak about to you; so I will just touch on a few points relating to these parts of the world which are so distant from Rome. In the first place, the whole race of the Indians, as far as I have been able to see, is very barbarous; and it does not like to listen to anything that is not agreeable to its own manners and customs, which, as I say, are barbarous. It troubles itself very little to learn anything about divine things and things which concern salvation. Most of the Indians are of vicious disposition, and are adverse to virtue. Their instability, levity, and inconstancy of mind are incredible; they have hardly any honesty, so inveterate are their habits of sin and cheating. We have hard work here, both in keeping the Christians up to the mark and in converting the heathen. And, as we are your children, it is fair that on this account you should take great care of us and help us continually by your prayers to God. You know very well what a hard business it is to teach people who neither have any knowledge of God nor follow reason, but think it a strange and intolerable thing to be told to give up their habits of sin, which have now gained all the force of nature by long possession. The experience which I have of these countries makes me think that I can affirm with truth, that there is no prospect of perpetuating our Society out here by means of the natives themselves, and that the Christian religion will hardly survive us who are now in the country; so that it is quite necessary that continual supplies of ours should be sent out from Europe. We have now some of the Society in all parts of India where there are Christians. Four are in the Moluccas, two at Malacca, six in the Comorin Promontory, two at Coulan, as many at Bazain, four at Socotra. The distances between these places are immense; for instance, the Moluccas are more than a thousand leagues from Goa, Malacca five hundred, Cape Comorin two hundred, Coulan one hundred and twenty, Bazain sixty, and Socotra three hundred. In each place there is one of the Society who is Superior of the rest. As these Superiors are men of remarkable prudence and virtue, the others are very well content. The Portuguese in these countries are masters only of the sea and of the coast. On the mainland they have only the towns in which they live. The natives themselves are so enormously addicted to vice as to be little adapted to receive the Christian religion. They so dislike it that it is most difficult to get them to hear us if we begin to preach about it, and they think it like death to be asked to become Christians. So for the present we devote ourselves to keeping the Christians whom we have. Certainly, if the Portuguese were more remarkable for their kindness to the new converts, a great number would become Christians; as it is, the heathen see that the converts are despised and looked down upon by the Portuguese, and so, as is natural, they are unwilling to become converts themselves. For all these reasons there is no need for me to labor in these countries, and as I have learnt from good authorities that there is a country near China called Japan, the inhabitants of which are all heathen, quite untouched by Mussulmans or Jews, and very eager to learn what they do not know both in things divine and things natural, I have determined to go thither as soon as I can.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Source: From: Henry James Coleridge, ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2d Ed., 2 Vols., (London: Burns & Oates, 1890), Vol. II, pp. 67-75; reprinted in William H. McNeil and Mitsuko Iriye, eds., Modern Asia and Africa, Readings in World History Vol. 9, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 11-13. ******* Also check out the following article Vishwas Varghese Why The Pope Should Apologize To India (Available on www.hvk.org and www.atributetohinduism.com . The VHP's protest march against the Pope's visit in India this week, has drawn quite a lot of attention and flak as a misguided attempt to "create disorder by fascist". The Indian media has been having a field day with mongering rumors that seek to undermine and defame the Hindutva oriented organizations. One has to look beyond all the politically motivated hype and hoopla and look analytically at what is the logic behind the demand for the Pope's apology. The rationale behind this demand is cited to be the Christian Inquisition which took place in Goa, for the purpose of forcefully converting the Hindus to Christianity. Let us take a look at some historical facts to see if the Hindutva minded organizations are truly justified in asking the pope as the representative of the Catholic church to apologize and atone for such crimes against Hindus in the past. Alan Machado-Prabhu has recently written a book about the history of Goa starting from ancient times, titled Sarasvati's Children: A History of the Mangalorean Christians. The book describes in detail the origins of Goa's inhabitants. According to Machado's account and that of several established historians, some time around 1000 B.C. an immense number of Vedic people who originally lived on the banks of the river Sarasvati migrated to this coast. Their emigration was forced by the drying up of the Sarasvati River which was the basis for much of the so called Indus Valley civilization. This civilization has now been termed the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization in view of its indelible dependence on the Sarasvati and Sindhu rivers. Moreover the work of such accomplished scholars as N.S. Rajaram, David Frawley, N. Jha, S.R. Rao, etc. has proven that the Sarasvati Sindhu civilization was a Vedic one. As a consequence the people who were forced to seek fresh fields and pastures in view of the drying up of Sarasvati, were none other than Hindus. Large numbers of them followed the ancient Dakshinapatha, the southern route and came all the way to Gomantak and to what is now called Goa. Gomantak had no indigenous population and therefore made an ideal place to settle down for these scholars. The new location was a highly successful one because of the fertile quality of the land. The majority of the emigrants were highly educated and well versed in the advanced scientific, artistic and literary traditions of Vedic civilization and therefore began to be called the Brahmins of the north (Gaud). Eventually they began to be referred to as the Gaud Sarasvat Brahmins. They were famous all over India and abroad for their immense scholarship and learning. Over the centuries Goa was comparatively undisturbed under the rule of the Mauryas, the Kadambas and the Chalukya dynasty. But around 1327 AD Goa was conquered by Mohammed Bin Tughlak and thousands of Hindus were massacred in cold blood. A number of murderous Muslim rulers such as Bahamani king Mohammed Shah, Yusuf Adil Shah, etc. held the state in the grip of terror until the Portugese Christians who came to foreign lands led by Vasco De Gama in the hope of converting millions of "Heathens" managed to overcome them. By the mid 1500s, the Portugese had established a strong hold on Indian ports and the terror of the Inquisition sanctioned by the Catholic Church was established and institutionalized in Goa. The main objective of the Inquisitors was to ensure that all natives be converted to Christianity whether by the sword, bribery or blackmail. Around 1540 the Inquisition was at its peak, thousands of Hindus were dispossessed, massacred and mutilated if they refused to convert. Half the property of a person found in possession of idols went to the Church. According to Machado, "The Church acquired urban and rural properties on an impressive scale". An incredible amount of loot and plunder of the immense riches possessed by the Hindus was shipped off to the Church. Hindus were forbidden from performing any of their festivals openly. Hindu were amassed and deliberately forced to participate in grotesque public performances for the Christian feast days during the very same days that they used to celebrate Hindu festivals. To this day these macabre enactments still survive in Goa today as the Milagres feast dance, the Carnavalo and the Festa de Leques. In 1542 the most barbaric of these oppressors in the form of Jesuit priest "Saint" Francis Xavier arrived on the scene. The incredible hatred and venom that this man nursed against the Hindus is obvious from his own writings and records. In 1543 , Xavier sent a Letter from India, to the Society of Jesus at Rome which outlined his perspective of the Indian people. The extremely racist and intolerant views of Christian proselytizers like Xavier pour out of every word in this letter: "We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and I always apply to them the words of holy David, "from an unholy race and a wicked and crafty man deliver me, O Lord." They are liars and cheats to the very backbone. These are the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made the others their slaves, their imposture and tricks, and this has induced many to leave the worship of the false gods, and eagerly become Christians. If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ. As there is so great a variety of color among men, and the Indians being black themselves, consider their own color the best, they believe that their gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at." Xavier would become an increasingly frustrated and embittered man as he discovered the obstinate stubbornness with which the Hindus refused to be forced to convert to Christianity. His frustration is evident in a Letter on the Missions sent in 1949 to St. Ignatius de Loyola, of the Catholic Church. In it as usual he displays his ample hatred for the "idolaters" as he calls the Hindus, but his most vitriolic animosity is reserved for the Brahmins who were the primary defenders of Hinduism. By this time Xavier has apparently become aware of the fact that it is the Brahmins who are the final line of defense in keeping the Hindu followers together. His inability to suppress them leads to his sweeping generalization that the entire race of Indians is "barbaric" in this letter: "May the grace and charity of our Lord Christ always be with us! Amen. My own and only Father in the Heart of Christ, I think that the many letters from this place which have lately been sent to Rome will inform you how prosperously the affairs of religion go on in these parts, through your prayers and the good bounty of God. But there seem to be certain things which I ought myself to speak about to you; so I will just touch on a few points relating to these parts of the world which are so distant from Rome. In the first place, the whole race of the Indians, as far as I have been able to see, is very barbarous; and it does not like to listen to anything that is not agreeable to its own manners and customs, which, as I say, are barbarous. It troubles itself very little to learn anything about divine things and things which concern salvation. Most of the Indians are of vicious disposition, and are adverse to virtue. Their instability, levity, and inconstancy of mind are incredible; they have hardly any honesty, so inveterate are their habits of sin and cheating. We have hard work here, both in keeping the Christians up to the mark and in converting the heathen. And, as we are your children, it is fair that on this account you should take great care of us and help us continually by your prayers to God. You know very well what a hard business it is to teach people who neither have any knowledge of God nor follow reason, but think it a strange and intolerable thing to be told to give up their habits of sin, which have now gained all the force of nature by long possession. The experience which I have of these countries makes me think that I can affirm with truth, that there is no prospect of perpetuating our Society out here by means of the natives themselves, and that the Christian religion will hardly survive us who are now in the country; so that it is quite necessary that continual supplies of ours should be sent out from Europe." One is amazed at Xavier's Christian definition of barbarism. Apparently anyone who does not recognize Jesus Christ as his savior qualifies for this title. It would have been fascinating to know what the victims of this undisguised genocidal aggression thought of their tormentors. Indeed "barbarism" is too mild a word to aptly describes the horrific aggression that was perpetrated on the Goans for the sake of Christ! In Machado's book the chapter on the Inquisition is aptly headed: Horrendum Ac Tremendum Spectaculem. Machado relates how the historian Fryer describes one of the instances of the Christian aggression - "In the principal market was raised an Engine of great height, at top like a Gibbet, with a Pulley for the Strapado which unhinges a Man's joints, a cruel Torture." Even Fryrer's (1675) brief reference to the Inquisition barely does justice to the fearful dread it brought to the people living in Portuguese territories. Of all the organizations the Portuguese took to her overseas territories it was the Inquisition that stalked the land, menacing and seeking all it might devour". Portugese records themselves show that the Inquisition burned at the stake 57 alive and 64 in effigy, 105 of them being men and 16 women. Others sentenced to various cruel punishments totaled 4,046 of whom 3,034 were men. The people who were converted but still continued occasionally and secretly to perform Hindu rituals were treated even more harshly. Even this low number represented by the perpetrators themselves is enough to provide us a clue to how many were truly subjected to the horrors. There can be no doubt that thousands if not millions perished at the hands of the Christian Sword which would not tolerate non believers in the path of the Church. Many of the orders dictated by the Portugese administration demonstrate the depth of oppression against their victims. Mr. Kanchan Gupta, the editor of BJP Today had researched and presented these records in his brilliant article on Rediff magazine, earlier this year. Some of the historical records that Mr. Gupta unearthed, clearly demonstrated the unabashedly oppressive nature of the Christian regime which had ruthlessly usurped Goa. On April 2, 1560, Viceroy D Constantine de Braganca issued orders instructing that Brahmins should be thrown out of Goa and other areas under Portuguese control. They were given al of one month to dispose of all possessions. Anyone found violating the order would have their properties seized. On February 7, 1575, Governor Antonio Morez Barreto declared that the estates of Brahmins whose "presence was prejudicial to Christianity" would be confiscated and used for "providing clothes to the New Christians". In 1585, The Third Concilio Provincial which was a gathering of bishops and other Christian leaders adopted a resolution declaring, 'His Majesty the king has on occasion ordered the viceroys and governors of India that there should be no Brahmins in his lands, and that they should be banished therefrom together with the physicians and other infidels who are prejudicial to Christianity. As the orders of His Majesty in this regard have not been executed, great impediments in the way of conversion and the community of New Christians have followed and continue to follow. From now onwards at certain times in each year the archbishop should obtain information regarding Brahmins, physicians and any other infidels who might be prejudicial to conversion to Christianity, and in consultation with the Christian priests, prepare a roll of their names which should be signed by him. This should be presented to the viceroy or the governor in order that the latter might issue orders for banishing them from the lands of the king, as His Majesty has ordered...' On January 31, 1620, the Portugese declared that '...no Hindu, of whatever nationality or status he may be, can or shall perform marriages in this city of Goa, nor in the islands or adjacent territories of His Majesty, under pain of a fine of 1000 Xerafins.' The Third Concilio Provincial also demanded a ban on the traditional thread ceremony and the ban was imposed by the Sword. The Brahmins who tried to evade such prejudicial dictates by going outside Portuguese territory for the ceremony were prevented from doing so by the ominously threatening order that said 'I hereby order that no Hindu subject proceed beyond the borders of the state to celebrate the thread ceremony...' Orders prohibiting Hindu women from wearing Bindi on their foreheads along with an order allowing the Christian clergy the right to baptize all orphans are blatant proofs of the violent suppression of religious rights by the Christian Church in Goa. Such then is the history of Christian persecution in Goa. And yet the cruelest of these proselytizers from the past are supposed to be treated as 'Saints" by the very nation that was victimized by them! Stating the facts about the past tyranny of the Church in India, quickly becomes an "earth shattering" conspiracy by the "fascist" Hindu extremists. The signs of India's humiliation and oppression at the hands of her Christian aggressors is present everywhere in the nomenclature of innumerable roads, buildings and educational institutions named after the very criminals who sought to annihilate all traces of India's vast and ancient repertoire of advanced knowledge. Is asking the Pope to apologize for such a vast range of heinous crimes unjustified? Saint Francis Xavier, the missionary who was responsible for the death of thousands of innocent Hindus of Goa was canonized and is cited today as one of the foremost Saints of the Catholic Church. A quick search of the catholic Encyclopedia yields us this information about him. "It is truly a matter of wonder that one man in the short space of ten years (6 May, 1542 - 2 December, 1552) could have visited so many countries, traversed so many seas, preached the Gospel to so many nations, and converted so many infidels. The incomparable apostolic zeal which animated him, and the stupendous miracles which God wrought through him, explain this marvel, which has no equal elsewhere. St. Francis Xavier is considered the greatest missionary since the time of the Apostles, and the zeal he displayed, the wonderful miracles he performed, and the great number of souls he brought to the light of true Faith, entitle him to this distinction. He was canonized with St. Ignatius in 1622, although on account of the death of Gregory XV, the Bull of canonization was not published until the following year. The body of the saint is still enshrined at Goa in the church which formerly belonged to the Society. In 1614 by order of Claudius Acquaviva, General of the Society of Jesus, the right arm was severed at the elbow and conveyed to Rome, where the present altar was erected to receive it in the church of the Gesu. " Even today the body of the "Saint" in Goa is said to be in a "marvelous" state of preservation as proof of his miraculous character. With Saints like Francis Xavier epitomizing the nature of Christian kindness in India, is it any wonder that the proselytizing nature of the Church is increasingly condemned and denounced by civilized human beings all over the world? The souls of the thousands of Indians that suffered genocide at the hands of the religious fanaticism which was institutionalized by the Catholic Church, would hardly find succor in any apology by the Pope. But at the very least it would have been a some small form of retribution for the sins committed by the forces he represents. Also check out following link- http://members.tripod.com/~Berchmans/latin.html and http://forumhub.com/indhistory/666.17.14.30.html for more info