Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 1552-1952 . CEORGES P. VANIER LIBRARY, LOYOLA COLLEGE, MONTREAL (Photograph of a memory-encrusted statue in Loyola’s Administration Building) 108824 OCT 1 0 1968

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His Eminence Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, as he celebrated Pontifical High Mass in the Chapel on April 29, DOcdication Paul Emile Cardinal Leger To Paul-Emile Leger, Cardinal Archbishop of Montreal, Montreal’s first Cardinal, the Loyola Review is dedicated. At left, His Eminence is seen enthroned in our Chapel for the cele- bration of our titular feast, that of Saint Ignatius Loyola. He is assisted, left to right, by Rev. J. F. McCaffrey, S.J., Rector of Loyola, Rev. Georges D’Auteuil, S.J., Rector of College Ste-Marie, and Rev. Paul Vanier, S.)., Rector of College Jean de Brebeuf. Below, expressing our feelings now as it did on that day, is the address of welcome spoken to His Eminence by Francis A. Ramsperger, President of the Council of Student Representatives. Your Eminence: On behalf of the entire College and High School student body may I say that on the occasion of your elevation to the position of Prince of the Church, the joy which was so strongly felt not only here in Montreal but throughout all of Canada, was felt in a particularly special manner here at Loyola. As Canadians rejoiced along with our fellow countrymen. As Montrealers we were especially proud of the great honor you brought to our city. For we happily realize the wonderful work you have accomplished in our diocese in so short a time. This work is clearly evidenced in your sponsoring of the Rosary Crusade and again in your energetic furtherance of Catholic Action, through which we Catholics of Montreal may further communicate and spread the truths of our faith. As students we can well appreciate your strong interest in the advancement of higher education both at present and in the past as Rector of the Canadian College in Rome. But it is as Loyola students that we find an additional and particularly strong reason to rejoice over your elevation to the position of Cardinal. For, as members of a Jesuit College, we strongly realize the need and importance of a true and loyal devotion to the Holy Se. And, in view of this devotion, we are proud and happy to have in our midst the personal representa- tive of our Holy Father. Everyone knows that our Holy Father holds in high esteem every Prince of the Church; but indications are not lacking that he holds Your Eminence particularly close, as one considers a dear and beloved friend. In a time when the world is in such need of Christ’s whole teaching and the leadership of the Church, we are proud that our Holy Father has chosen as a Prince of the Church, and ecclesiastical leader of our city, one who is so well endowed by nature and grace to lead us to our eternal destiny. Your Eminence, we, at Loyola, pledge you our prayers and or whole-hearted support. May God bless you and keep you with us for many, many years.

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Apostle of the Indies - 400 Years Among the many feast days and religious anniv- ersaries celebrated during the past year, one of the most outstanding was the four hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Francis Xavier, the scholar, sold- ier, missionary and saint who was one of the first members of the Society of Jesus. It has become customary when speaking of St. Francis Xavier, to call him “the greatest missionary since St. Paul,” and this is no figure of speech. The fire of Christian missionary zeal, which was enkindled by Our Lord’s mandate “go and preach the Gospel to all nations,” burned with great brightness and vigor in the torch held in the hand of Paul of Tarsus, who was struck from his horse to travel the world for Christ. The torch spread its fire of love through the nations of the world in the hands of the “last” Apostle, and as the inheritance of his successors, it never burned more brightly than when grasped in the freshly anointed hands of the “Second Paul” fourteen hundred years later. Francisco de Xavier Y Jassu was born in the Spanish Navarre on the Tuesday of Holy Week, 1506, — on the day named after the pagan god of war, in the week of the One, True God of Love. The time of his birth served as a preview of the life of this man who was to become the first expeditionary force of the Company of Jesus. From his place of birth, he received the generosity, the love of culture and adventure which are its best bequest. At the age of nineteen, he went to Paris where he entered the College Sainte-Barbe. It was there that he met Pierre Favre, and it was there that they both came under the influence of Ignatius Loyola. From their association arose the beginnings of the Society of Jesus, which were crystalized when they and four others made their vow of Montmartre on August 15, 1534- Not as suddenly but equally as.surely as St. Paul, Francis Xavier was struck from his studies and pro- fessorship at Paris to become the teacher of nations. His first field of apostolic work was in the hospitals of Venice and Rome. He received Holy Orders with St. Ignatius on June 24, 1537, and assisted in lay- ing the foundations for the new Society of which he was to become the first secretary. Three years after his ordination, at the earnest request of the king of Portugal, he left Rome for Lisbon where he remained nine months in zealous work prior to his departure for the more extensive fields of the East Indies. On April 7, 1541, he set sail for India, down the west coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to Goa on the west coast of India, — a 7000 mile journey, longer and more perilous than that of Columbus. His first three years in India were spent among the people of the people of the western and southern part of the to the sick with considerable success. Another arduous peninsula and in Ceylon, preaching and ministering sea voyage brought him to Malacca on the Malayan peninsula south of China, and from there to the Molucca Islands where he spent a year and a half. He returned to Goa to establish a Novitiate and a house of studies before setting out once more for a new area of conquest — Japan. Having mastered the difficult language, he began preaching, and was most successful in Central Japan where several Christian communities were formed and endured even per- secution. After two and a half years’ work in Japan, Francis returned to Goa where he planned an invasion of still another country, the fabulous empire of China, of which he had heard so much during his stay among the Japanese. He set out in April, 1552, with the title of Ambassador, and overcoming opposition at Malacca, finally had his goal in sight, as he beheld the China coast from a Portugese vessel off the island of Sancian. But he was not to reach his goal, for, while planning the best means of approach, he became seriously ill, and died in a wretched hut, on a lonely island in a foreign sea on December 3, 1552. In Francis Xavier were fully realized the exchanges which a missionary must make. He left his castle at Navarre to make his home anywhere in the world; he resigned his professorship at Sainte-Barbe to make India, Malaya and Japan his classrooms; from Venice to Goa to Nagasaki he travelled, spreading in all directions the fire which consumed him, — the love of his God and of the images of God, his fellow men. He traveled further than many explorers as a one-man legion in the newest Division of the Church Militant, the Company of Jesus. In 1662, the name of Francis Xavier, with that of Ignatius was enscribed on the lists of the canonized saints, — the heroes of Christ. He is the universal patron of the missions. Today in missionary countries throughout the world, other Xaviers suffer lonliness, sickness, dis- “ouragement, yet they know that they have a patron before them who suffered when they suffer, yearned for what they yearn for. They can turn to a patron who was a missionary to the last moment of his life and indeed still is today. A. GERARD PATTON, ’53.