About the life of Blessed Joseph Vaz (1651-1711), Apostle of Kanara and Sri Lanka and Patron Saint of Goa, whose 291st death anniversary was commemorated on January 16, 2002, in several parts of the world. 1651: Born in Benaulim, Goa, India, on April 21. 1676: Is ordained a priest. Shortly after, volunteers to go to Sri Lanka where the Dutch were persecuting Catholics and had banned all priests from entering the island. The Chapter of Goa refuses his offer because the mission would have meant certain death for him. 1681: Is sent to rescue the almost extinct mission in Kanara, present-day Karnataka in India. Rebuilds the Church in Mangalore and Kanara, establishes missions, tends to the sick, ransoms prisoners. 1684: Returns to Goa and joins a band of native Indian priests who formed a community. 1685: Founds a religious Congregation, the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, on September 25. 1686: Leaves Goa secretly and sets out for Sri Lanka. 1687: Arrives in Jaffna in the Tamil region of Sri Lanka, with a servant, John Vaz, both disguised as coolies. He works with a price on his head. 1691: Is almost captured by the Dutch and is advised to go to Kandy. Is brought into Candy in chains and imprisoned as a Portuguese spy by the Buddhist King, Vimaladharma Surya II. 1693: Works a miracle of rain during a severe drought. The King releases him and gives him protection and freedom to preach in his kingdom. As in Goa and in Mangalore, is often seen in ecstasy in prayer. The people call him "Sammana Swami" or Angelic Father. 1697: Is joined by three of his Indian Oratorians from Goa. During a smallpox epidemic in Kandy, the King and the people flee the capital. Fr. Vaz and Fr. Carvalho, tend to the dying and abandoned victims for almost two years. 1705: Dedicates the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu. 1711: Dies in Kandy on January 16, after 23 years of arduous missionary work in Sri Lanka. The Work of Blessed Joseph Vaz His missionary work was not colonial, not helped, authorized, associated with conquest by a colonial power. He gained the protection of a non-Christian King, Vimaladharma Surya II of Kandy, a devout Buddhist. He used inculturation as a missionary method. He founded a Catholic para-liturgy and literature using the two languages and cultures of Sri Lanka, Tamil and Sinhalese; he practiced and taught Meditation. He educated his servant John Vaz, a member of the Indigenous tribe of Kunbis, and sent him back to Goa with a letter of recommendation to the priesthood. At that time, the Portuguese Church Councils reserved the priesthood only for the two higher castes in Goa. He founded the miraculous Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu, one of the five officially crowned Marian Shrines of the Church, crowned in 1924, before Fatima. He is the first non-European native in modern times to found a Mission and Church in a "Third World" country; to found a fully native Catholic Religious Congregation; and to be given the official title of "Apostle" (of Kanara and Sri Lanka) by the Church, for his work in rescuing the Church there. His Indian Oratorian Mission is the only fully native, non-European Catholic Mission of our colonial era. The Church he re-founded in Sri Lanka was persecuted and survived isolation from Rome for 140 years: "Here is a country in which the faith was first preached, and a Church founded with great success to flourish for over a century, by missionaries who, being afterwards forced by the political failure of their nation to abandon the field, left this island for good...and their converts... without churches or priests and under the heel of a persecutor; and a single priest (Joseph Vaz) from another country, came here of his own accord......and laboring heroically with a price upon his head, revived the faith...and made many conversions in the teeth of persecution, imprisonment and hostility...(no) subsequent political, social, and ecclesiastical changes in the country were ever able to undo his work...It must be stated with caution and subject to correction, but no other instance of such an achievement is known in Christendom." Sri Lankan historian, Fr. S.G. Perera, S.J., from his book, The Life of the Venerable Father Joseph Vaz Courtesy: Gecome Pinto
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