Pope Francis and the act of faith of St Francis Xavier

By Roberto de Mattei   |   18 September 2024

Among the gravest of errors widespread today, even in Catholic circles, is the one that holds that religions are equal because they all worship just one God. This is a very grave error, because it denies at its root the intrinsic truth of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the statements of Pope Francis at the Catholic Junior College of Singapore on 13 September 2024 are along these lines and, with all due respect to the Pope, they are objectively scandalous.

The official Vatican transcript quotes Francis as follows:

“All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children. ‘But my God is more important than yours!’ Is this true? There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian. Understood?”

Our immediate answer is no, Holy Father, we do not understand and we cannot understand. Our religion, and also the history of the Society of Jesus to which you belong, teaches us something quite different.

The diocese of Singapore, where you made these statements, has an illustrious Jesuit founder, Saint Francis Xavier, who arrived in what was then called Malacca in 1545. In 1558, the territory was elevated to a diocese, suffragan to Goa in India.

Saint Francis Xavier was born to noble parents in 1506 in Navarre. He studied at the University of Paris, where one of his roommates was Ignatius of Loyola, who turned the young man from a model student into a champion of the Gospel. On 24 June 1537, he was ordained a priest and, in the spring of 1539, he was among the first founders of the Society of Jesus. The following year, when King John III of Portugal asked for missionaries for the Portuguese colonies, he was sent to India by the pope with the title of “apostolic nuncio”.

Arriving in Goa in 1542, after a long and gruelling journey, he spent two years going from village to village, on foot or on incommodious vessels, exposed to a thousand dangers, baptising, founding churches and schools, converting thousands of inhabitants, greeted everywhere as a saint and wonder-worker. In 1549, he left Goa for Japan, where he planted the seeds of the Catholic faith. On 17 April 1552, he embarked to carry out his last plan: to bring the Gospel to China. During the adventurous journey, he landed on the island of Shangchuan, a haven for pirates and smugglers, where he fell ill with pneumonia and, unable to get any treatment, died in a hut on 3 December of the same year, after repeating a number of times, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! O Virgin Mother of God, remember me!”

Two years later, his body was transported intact first to Malacca and then to Goa, where it is venerated in the Basilica of Bom Jesus. The Church of the Gesù in Rome houses one of his arms, removed for veneration beside the tomb of St Ignatius. He was beatified in 1619 by Paul V and canonised in 1622 by Gregory XV. The Church set 3 December as his liturgical feast day and proclaimed him patron of the missions.

Saint Francis Xavier translated into lived Christianity the words Jesus addressed to the Apostles: “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mk 16:15–16). The words of Our Lord are clear: in the ordinary course there is no salvation outside the name of Christ. It is estimated that the missionary Saint conferred baptism on about 40,000 pagans, opening for them the gates of Paradise.

In a famous letter of 15 January 1544, Saint Francis Xavier writes from Goa:

“I have not stopped since the day I arrived. I conscientiously made the rounds of the villages. I bathed in the sacred waters all the children who had not yet been baptised. This means that I have purified a very large number of children so young that, as the saying goes, they could not tell their right hand from their left. The older children would not let me say my Office or eat or sleep until I taught them one prayer or another. Then I began to understand, ‘The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these’. … Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity, ‘What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!’ I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them. This thought would certainly stir most of them to meditate on spiritual realities, to listen actively to what God is saying to them. They would forget their own desires, their human affairs, and give themselves over entirely to God’s will and His choice. They would cry out with all their heart, ‘Lord, I am here! What do You want me to do? Send me anywhere You like — even to India.’”

Saint Francis Xavier also left us an act of faith that deserves to be recited on our knees and deeply meditated upon in these times of confusion:

“I believe, with all my heart, all that the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church commands me to believe about You, O my God! One God in three persons.

“I believe all that the Church believes and teaches about the eternal Son of the Father, God like Him, and who, for me, became man, suffered, died, rose again and reigns in heaven with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

“Finally, I believe all that the holy Church, our mother, commands me to believe. I have the firm resolution to lose all, suffer all, give my blood and my life, rather than to renounce a single point of my faith, in which I wish to live and die.

“When my last hour comes, my cold lips may perhaps be unable to renew the expression of my faith, but I confess as of now and for the moment of my death that I acknowledge You (O Saviour Jesus!) as the Son of God. I believe in You, I dedicate to You my heart, my soul, my life, my whole self. Amen.”