Missionary, Explorer, Hero

This description is of Goa on May 6, 1542, the day the missionary St. Francis Xavier first set foot on the Indian subcontinent. Four hundred and sixty-two years later, you can still find some in the backpacker idyll to whom Coleridge's words apply. But the suggestion that the Jesuit adventurer had little lasting influence is at odds with events this month in the former Portuguese colony. For 43 days until Jan. 2, a continuous procession of 2 million people will shuffle past Xavier's body—which is believed by the faithful to be miraculously uncorrupted since it was moved to Goa in 1554, two years after his death—as it is unveiled for its decennial exposition. In the number of people expected to attend, the pilgrimage is equaled in size only by the hajj.

The bare facts of Xavier's life hold few clues to his continued esteem. Unlike some of his fellow missionaries in Africa or the Americas, he discovered no new wonders of the world. None of the countries he visited was converted root and branch to Christianity. He died without ever realizing his dream of reaching mainland China. And in India, Xavier is infamous as the man who introduced the Inquisition. The visible manifestation of his legacy today is mixed; St. Francis Xavier schools and churches dot his route from southern India to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan, but so do Xavier furniture warehouses, bus companies and even, on a beach in northern Goa, Xavier's Rum Pub. The one institution he did build himself, St. Paul's College in Old Goa, is now a forgotten ruin long devoured by jungle.

Yet, as the religious historian Alban Goodier writes in his book Saints for Sinners: "To many of his contemporaries, he was thought a failure ... [but] probably there is no saint ... no hero in history who has more enthusiastic admirers than St. Francis Xavier." For whatever the vicissitudes and disappointments, Xavier never gave up. Father Olavo Vello Pereira, who helped organize this year's exposition, says: "To contemplate Xavier is to look at fire. That zeal and that enthusiasm, it's mesmerizing." In Japan, which he was one of the first Westerners ever to visit, Xavier's amiable manner and learned discourse is credited with helping open up the nation to outsiders. In India, he is revered by Christians, Hindus and Muslims alike as Goencho Sahib, a healer of the sick, a bringer of good fortune and—his legend taking a more modern twist—one who can bless new cars and trucks. In Malaysia, where he was known for a miraculous ability to call out the names of babies he had never met, mothers hold him up as a model father to errant partners.

The ultimate proof of Xavier's continued appeal, however, is the pilgrims from Europe and across Asia who are swelling Goa this month. Last week, as Xavier's body was borne shoulder high from the Basilica of Bom Jesus to the Se Cathedral, where it is being displayed, two onlookers attempted conversation as they squashed and squinted for a glimpse. "Christian?" asked the young Indian woman in a bright purple sari. "Christian," confirmed the elderly South Korean man in his baseball cap, shorts and trainers. "Xavier?" inquired the woman. "Hero," smiled the man.