I come from a tiny place on the Indian subcontinent called Goa, whose borders are defined by her colonial history. For over four hundred and fifty years, until the end of 1961, we were a foreign territory of the kingdom of Portugal and from 1910 the republic of Portugal. This left us with a markedly European culture (isolating us nicely from surrounding territories in India), which the Portuguese were happy to cultivate, where other colonial powers allowed the natives to continue within their own cultures. The Portuguese were eager to make us their own, to call us Portuguese too. And the Saint whose feast day is tomorrow is a reminder of that. He was a Goan, born into a Goan family, but he became a European missionary to the island nation of Ceylon, which we call today Sri Lanka. And he went there from Goa to rescue the Ceylonese Catholic Church (built by the Portuguese), which had suffered the same fate under Dutch Calvinists that the English Catholic Church had suffered under Queen Elizabeth I. This then is his story in summary.
Joseph Vaz was born in 1651, at Benaulim, a village not far south of the island of Goa, to Cristóvão Vaz and Maria de Miranda. He was a good student and soon arrived at the great city of Goa (now mostly in ruin, and called Old-Goa) for secondary school. There he studied rhetoric and the humanities with the Jesuits and then theology and philosophy with the Dominicans. He was ordained a deacon in 1675, and a priest in 1676, and became a popular preacher and confessor. He would have been among the first of the natives to be ordained, for the Portuguese Church had refrained from permitting this for many decades. And in 1677, Father Joseph crowned his devotion to the Blessed Virgin by consecrating himself a slave of Mary, recording it in a Deed of Bondage that still exists. And within his heart burned the fire of the missionary and he could never be happy in the metropolis of Goa. He had heard of the disaster that had overtaken the Ceylonese Catholics with the takeover of their island by the Calvinist Dutch, and the subsequent persecution of the Church. He wanted to help them, but was diverted towards Canara, south of Goa, in 1681 by the Portuguese archdiocese of Goa, where he found an ongoing political battle between the authorities of the Portuguese church in Goa and of a new dicastery of the Holy See of Rome, the Congregation of Propaganda Fide (CPF). Father Joseph now entered the scene in the diplomatic position of the representative of the archdiocese of Goa, and worked with the CPF bishop in Mangalore to bring peace to the Church in Canara. Simultaneously, he built the missionary present of the Church in the area, building new church buildings in several places and establishing a reputation that even today Mangalorean Catholics remember. And that includes spectacular miracle stories, for this was one of those fantastic priests in the history of the Church who are called thaumaturges or miracle-workers.
Back in Goa, the dream of Ceylon still firmly in his heart, Father Joseph erected the Congregation of the Oratory of S. Philip Neri in 1685, the first religious community of native Goan priests there. The Congregation took charge of the church of the Holy Miraculous Cross (a Cruz milagrosa), and became known as the Milagrosa Fathers. The mission to Ceylon became the greatest project of the Goa Oratory, and Father Joseph finally arrived at Tuticorin in south India in 1687. It would have been impossible for somebody dressed as a Catholic priest to enter Dutch Ceylon and, together with his man-servant João he disguised himself as a menial worker and, passing through the island of Mannar, entered at Jaffna. By 1689, he had planted himself within a Catholic bastion at Sillalai, bringing the Sacraments to the people for the first time in years. Everywhere, he had had to look for signs of a Catholic presence, which was usually concealed to avoid persecution. But at Sillalai he found a strong Catholic community, surviving without priests, supported doctrinally by appointed catechists. Father Joseph began a night-time ministry to the Catholics in the area, escaping the Dutch authorities. But when he realised that his presence was bringing trouble upon the Catholics of Sillalai, he travelled with João to Puttalam in the west, which was in the kingdom of Kandy, again finding a community of Catholics who had been without the Sacraments for decades. Placed under house arrest by King Vimaladharmasurya II of Kandy, Father now erected a simple chapel and set about learning the Sinhalese language; when he had established the Mass there, Catholics loyal to the king began to find their way to him. When he had progressively gained the trust of the king, Father Joseph built a larger church, expanded his ministry and in 1692 sent to Goa for more of the Oratorians to join him in Kandy. And the miracles abounded, as he continued about, barefoot and in disguise, escaping the Dutch authorities in Scarlet-Pimpernel fashion. In 1697, the Oratorian Fathers began to arrive from Goa, bringing news that Father Joseph had been named vicar general of Ceylon by the Portuguese bishop of Cochin, in south India. Newer arrivals in 1705 allowed him to create a more complete missionary organisation, with the creation of a Sinhalese Catholic literature that could rival the Ceylonese Buddhist literature. In 1705, he also declined the offer to be consecrated bishop and first vicar apostolic of Ceylon, which is why he is normally pictured with a bishop's mitre and crozier at his feet, or on a table, since he wouldn't have it.
Mostly barefoot since the day of his ordination, Father Joseph made repeated circuits of the island of Ceylon, discovering the Catholics and drawing them into his missionary network. Through frequent bouts of dysentery and other illnesses, he was able to resurrect the Ceylonese Church. His great patron, King Vimaladharmasurya II died in 1707, but the patronage of his family continued. The Fathers continued to arrive from Goa, and the Oratory continued to be the backbone of the Church in Ceylon until the nineteenth century, when political intrigues ended many Catholic Orders and Congregations. In 1710, while in bad health, Father Joseph began another missionary trip around the island, but succumbed to grave illness and died at Kandy on the 16th of January, 1711. He was beatified in 1995 by the Holy Father John Paul II and canonised by the Holy Father Francis in 2015. He is the first and only native Goan Saint in the history of the Church and the first Saint canonised in and for Ceylon. He is remembered on the 16th of January.
Learn more about Saint Joseph here.
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