Saint José de Anchieta

Saint José de Anchieta was a Jesuit and missionary who devoted almost his entire life to proclaiming the Gospel in Brazil. He is called the Apostle of Brazil. The Church commemorates him on June 9.

He was born on March 19, 1534, in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. He studied at the University of Coimbra, where he came to know the Jesuits. At the age of seventeen, before an image of the Mother of God in the cathedral of Coimbra, he made a vow of perpetual virginity, and on May 1, 1551, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus. Because of his poor health and his desire for missionary work, he was sent to Brazil in 1553. He was nineteen years old at the time.

As a novice he accompanied the provincial, Manuel da Nóbrega, to the mission on the Piratininga plateau. There, in 1554, the College of Saint Paul was founded, from which the city of São Paulo grew, and Anchieta is regarded as one of its founders. He taught grammar to the children of Portuguese settlers and of the Indigenous Tupi, quickly mastered their language, and wrote its first grammar. For the Indigenous people he composed a catechism adapted to their way of thinking. John Paul II said that he loved them as brothers, came to know their customs, and defended them against the injustices of the colonizers.

Together with Nóbrega he went to the Tamoio people, who were at war with the Portuguese, to bring about peace, and for a long time he remained among them as a hostage, in constant danger of death. According to tradition, it was then that he composed a long Latin poem in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary and committed it to memory, writing it down only after his release. After returning to São Paulo, he spent three years caring for Indigenous people sick with smallpox.

He was ordained a priest on June 8, 1566, in the cathedral of Salvador. Together with Nóbrega he was sent to Rio de Janeiro, where they founded a college, which he led as rector from 1570 to 1573. He also founded the village of Reritiba, which in 1887 was given the name Anchieta in his honor. Later, as provincial, he headed all the Jesuits in Brazil, who numbered more than one hundred forty, and twice a year he visited their houses and works. In 1585 he built a church in Guarapari dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

After his term as provincial he served as rector of the college in Vitória. He spent his last years in Reritiba and died there on June 9, 1597. His funeral was like a triumph, and the people bade him farewell as the Apostle of Brazil.

John Paul II beatified him on June 22, 1980. At the request of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, Pope Francis on April 3, 2014, extended his cult to the whole Church and enrolled him among the saints by what is called an equivalent canonization. At the Mass of thanksgiving in the Roman church of Saint Ignatius on April 24, 2014, the Pope said that Anchieta laid the cultural foundations of a nation in Jesus Christ.