Members of the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute during the Mass for the Feast of St Joseph Vaz and the Beatification of Ven. Fr Agnelo de Souza at the Church of St John the Baptist in Oakland-California, the USA, in January 2020.
The announcement that the Church has chosen a 15-year-old Italian teenager to be named Patron Saint of the Internet has aroused our interest in this well established Catholic tradition of having Patron Saints of special human endeavours and needs.
We have St Luke as the Patron Saint of doctors because he practised the healing arts. St Christopher is the Patron Saint of travellers, while St Jude is the Patron Saint of Desperate Cases.
Asia has many Martyr Saints and a few non-Martyr Saints. There is still no Asian “Patron Saint” of the Universal Church.
For the Asian Indian-Sri Lankan Catholic community, there is a great native Saint who has figured prominently in the evangelisation of India and Sri Lanka and who could well fit the bill. This is seventeenth-century Saint Joseph Vaz, who was canonised by Pope Francis in 2015.
A list of his many “Firsts”
* Saint Joseph Vaz is the first Asian Saint to evangelise and found a new church under persecution.
* He founded the first fully native religious Catholic Congregation in the colonial era and in our modern times. It is the Indian branch of the Oratorians that he founded in 1685.
* He is the first and only native Asian Saint to be canonised with the title of “Apostle” for his work in re-founding the missions in Kanara destroyed by the Dutch and for re-founding the Catholic Church in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) from the ashes of Dutch persecution.
* He is the first and only Catholic missionary who was given refuge and protected by a Buddhist King, and later by his son, while he did his mission work and ministered to his underground Catholics.
* He is the first and only Asian Saint whose followers (the Oratorians from Goa) smuggled themselves like he had, into a country (Sri Lanka) whose Catholics were under persecution and ministered to the persecuted Catholics for the 150 years that they were cut off from Rome and any Catholic power.
* He is the first Asian Saint to found a para-liturgy in the native languages (Tamil and Sinhalese) of the mission country where he worked so the local Catholics could understand the Mass and devotions.
* He is the first Asian Saint to conceive of a Catholic literature in the native languages of his mission field and have it established by his brilliant disciple, Fr Jacome Goncalves.
* He is the first Asian Saint who organised a Petition for Religious Freedom (1706) to a ruling power (the Dutch) that was persecuting Catholics.
* He is the first Asian Saint who risked his life from infection to nurse and care for the abandoned victims of a deadly infectious disease. He was a First Responder in 1696 during the smallpox epidemic in Kandy. Instead of leaving Kandy as the wealthy, the King and his courtiers did, St Joseph Vaz and his nephew, Fr Joseph Carvalho, stayed and nursed, fed, sheltered, and cleaned the pustules (sores) of abandoned smallpox victims who were thrown out into the streets and jungles to die.
* He founded the first hospital in Kandy to treat these abandoned and highly infectious victims during the smallpox epidemic.
Because of his clear response as a First Responder in the face of a deadly infectious disease like Covid, we have petitioned Pope Francis to make St Joseph Vaz “Patron Saint of First Responders and Victims of Infectious Diseases” for our Covid times.
If St Joseph Vaz does get this special title from the Pope, it would be a definite “First” for a native Asian Saint. Like St Jude and other Patron Saints, it would do more to continue his mission to the Church and to humanity than anything else we can do to preserve his spiritual legacy.
Those who wish to contact the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute and sign up for
the petition to help have St Joseph Vaz declared our first Asian Patron Saint are requested to visit the institute's website (www.josephnaikvaz.org).
(Filomena Saraswati Giese founded the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute in 1980. She has a Master’s degree in Theology from the Jesuit School of Theology, Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley. Her Master’s thesis was on the aspect of Indian Sannyasa in the life and missionary work of St Joseph Vaz)
