The missions of the Jesuits were not less important than
their schools. The Jesuits worked in Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and other
countries where Protestantism threatened to become dominant. Then they invaded
all the lands which the great maritime discoveries of the preceding age had
laid open to European enterprise. In India, China, the East Indies, Japan, the
Philippines, Africa, and the two Americas their converts from heathenism were
numbered by hundreds of thousands.
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER, 1506-1552 A.D.
The most eminent of all Jesuit missionaries, St. Francis
Xavier, had belonged to Loyola's original band. He was a little, blue-eyed man,
an engaging preacher, an excellent organizer, and possessed of so attractive a
personality that even the ruffians and pirates with whom he had to associate on
his voyages became his friends. Xavier labored with such devotion and success
in the Portuguese colonies of the Far East as to gain the title of
"Apostle to the Indies." He also introduced Christianity in Japan,
where it flourished until a persecuting emperor extinguished it with fire and
sword.
