Saint Joseph Vaz

Saint Joseph Vaz was a priest from Goa in India, an Oratorian and a missionary. For twenty-four years he rebuilt the persecuted Catholic Church in Ceylon, today’s Sri Lanka, which is why he is called the apostle of that island. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on January 16.

He was born on April 21, 1651, in Goa, then a Portuguese colony, into a family of living faith. He studied philosophy and theology at the Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Goa, and in 1676 he was ordained a priest. On August 5, 1677, he gave himself to Mary as her slave forever.

He was moved by the plight of the Catholics of Ceylon. The Portuguese had brought the faith there, but in the middle of the seventeenth century they were driven out by the Dutch, who banned Catholic practice; the priests had to leave the island, and for decades the faithful lived without the sacraments. Joseph wanted to go to their aid, but his superiors first sent him to the mission of Kanara, not far from Goa. After his return in 1684 he joined a small group of priests living in community. They chose him as their superior and adopted the model of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri.

In March 1686 he set out, and in 1687 he reached Jaffna in the north of the island, disguised as a poor laborer. He begged from door to door with a rosary around his neck, and in this way he found the Catholics who were in hiding. He celebrated Holy Mass in secret, often at night. When the Dutch discovered his presence, and the people who had sheltered him were flogged and imprisoned, he made his way to the independent kingdom of Kandy. There he was accused of spying for Portugal and put in chains. In prison, where he spent more than two years, he learned Sinhala; he had learned Tamil before he ever came to the island.

In time he won the king’s respect and the freedom to work. The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints relates the account that during a long drought he prayed for rain at an altar set up in front of the palace, and the downpour came before he had finished. When a smallpox epidemic broke out in Kandy in 1697 and the king and his court left the city, Joseph nursed the sick regardless of religion or caste, found food for them and buried the dead.

From Kandy he traveled on foot, often barefoot, to villages all over the island, including the Dutch territories and Colombo itself. He administered the sacraments, built churches, trained lay catechists and composed a catechism in the local languages. He brought other Oratorians from Goa, and the island was divided into eight missions. Out of humility he did not accept the episcopal dignity.

In 1710 he set out for the missions once more, but he was carried back to Kandy unconscious. He died there after months of illness on January 16, 1711, in the sixtieth year of his life. John Paul II beatified him in Colombo on January 21, 1995, and recalled that he is rightly regarded as the second founder of the Church in that country. Pope Francis canonized him there on January 14, 2015.