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The journey to Venice of the eight followers of Inigo was quite an adventure. They had to travel through Alsace and Switzerland in the cold winter, and more than once they lost their way in the snow. In addition to the weather, they also had to confront some Calvinist reformers they met on their way. The group finally reached Venice on January 8, 1537, and, divided into twos and threes, went to lodge at the hospitals of the city.
Preparation for the pilgrimage to the Holy Land was a matter of urgency, and twelve of the companions--the whole group with the exception of Inigo--left Venice for Rome on March 16 to obtain the Pope's blessing and permission for their trip to Jerusalem. The Holy Father Paul III granted them an audience on April 3, listened to their theological disputations with the cardinals and members of the Roman Curia, and not only did he give them the blessing requested, but a generous alms too to help defray their travelling expenses.
In mid-May the Parisian masters--now down to eleven including Inigo--were already back in Venice. Xavier and all the others who were not priests took sacred orders there on June 24, except Salmeron who was ordained a priest in September.
Tension between Venice and the Ottoman Empire made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem impossible for the moment, and the group decided to break into smaller units and wait three months for further developments. On September 13 Venice was forced to declare war on the Turks, and with that, all hope was lost of boarding a ship for the Holy Land, at least until the summer of 1538. If no passage could be found by then, they would put themselves at the entire disposition of the Holy Father.
Francis celebrated his first Mass in Vicenza on September 30, and, after recovering from a grave illness, started his priestly ministry in Bolonia, where his father Juan de Jassu had taken a doctor's degree in Canon Law many years before. There he preached in the squares, taught catechism to the children, heard confessions in the church of St. Lucia and was spiritual director to a select group of people until April 1538, when an order arrived from Inigo that he should come to Rome.
The war against the Turks continued unabated and the year of waiting was about to end. Inigo decided to call to Rome all his companions, and when the Pope on one occasion invited them to make Italy their Holy Land and Rome their Jerusalem, the group decided to give up their pilgrimage once and for all, and put themselves in the Pope's hands. A new stage had started in Xavier's life.
As a founding member of the group, Francis took full part in the deliberations of 1539 that prepared the foundation of the Society of Jesus. A summary in five chapters of the proceedings, written by Ignatius himself, was submitted to Paul III for approval. The Holy Father gave his placet, first verbally, and later by Papal Bull on September 27, 1540. By that time, however, Francis was already in Portugal, waiting for passage to India.
From the very beginning, letter-writing played a very important role in the Society of Jesus, and the heavy task of taking responsibility for the correspondence addressed to headquarters and answering it, became the province of Francis Xavier, the first secretary Ignatius had in Rome.
Such was the situation in 1540, when the Portuguese ambassador to the Hole See, with the full backing of Pope Paul III, asked Ignatius for six Jesuits. They would be sent to India to spread the Gospel in the newly colonized Portuguese territories. Ignatius answered him with a smile: "Good Jesus, my Lord Ambassador, and what will Your Lordship leave for the rest of the world?" The ambassador finally acquiesced to having only two Jesuits and Francis became one of the chosen two.
When Ignatius broke him the news: "Master Francis, this is a task for you!" our Navarrese did not think twice: "Good enough! I am ready". On that very day, March 14, Francis went to the Vatican for the Pope's blessing, bade farewell to his many friends, put a few stitches on some old clothes he had, and the following day left for Portugal in the retinue of the Portuguese ambassador Dom Pedro de Mascarenhas.
The journey was by land and took three full months. The party travelled across the north of Italy, had to cross the south of France from Lyons to Bayonne, and entered Spain from San Sebastian. After a brief stay in the ancestral palace of Loyola, Inigo's home, Francis continued his journey through Old Castile and Salamanca, and finally arrived in Lisbon at the end of June. There he found his comrade-in-arms Simon Rodrigues, who had preceded him by ship and was sick with a fever. The joy of seeing Francis again was the best medicine for Rodrigues to recover, and a few days later both were received in audience by Joao III, king of Portugal.
The king's court--first in Lisbon and then in Almeirim--became their place of work while waiting for a passage to India, and they proved so successful that their going to India was for a while kept in abeyance. The king wanted to have them in the royal court and Pope Paul III was quite willing to abide by the king's wishes. It was finally Inigo's suggestion that broke the deadlock: Xavier would leave for India while Rodrigues would stay in Portugal.
And so it came to be that on the seventh of April 1541--his 35th birthday--Francis bade farewell to his friend Simon Rodrigues, boarded the flagship Santiago and started on his long journey to India.
The Portuguese fleet had to endure thirteen months of untold suffering on its way to India coasting along the African continent. The ship often became a floating hospital, and Xavier's caring for the sick gained him the name of "holy priest", a title people had already bestowed on him in Bologne, Rome and the court of Lisbon.
The forty days of deadly calm in the cauldron of Guinea were an unmitigated inferno. Heat and humidity rotted away water, clothes and food. Scurvy and fever wasted also the bodies and desperation the souls. Francis was always available to all, ready to hear confessions and give spiritual support, oblivious of his fits of dizziness and impaired health. And at the same time he managed to keep intact his usual conviviality and sense of humour. Xavier lived, so to speak, "always nailed on the cross and always risen".
The fleet had left Lisbon well behind schedule, and when it finally arrived in Mozambique after sailing along the coast of Brazil and round the Cape of Good Hope, it was already the end of August. By then the wind was blowing southwest and it was impossible to continue the journey to India. The only alternative left was to lay anchor in Mozambique for the winter.
Mozambique had a well-deserved reputation of being "the grave-yard of the Portuguese". Its climate was extremely unhealthy, and in the last 35 years 15.000 Portuguese had found there their final resting-place. In Mozambique too "the holy priest" kept on ministering to the sick and dying without a moment's respite, until fever and delirium finally consigned him to bed.
With the rest of the fleet still anchored in the harbour, the new governor of India, Martim Affonso SousaA sailed off for India in February 1542 in a new swift galleon, and insisted that Francis should accompany him. And so it was that in May 1542 Goa could finally welcome "the holy priest" Francis Xavier, Papal Nuncio by a brief of Pope Paul III and Superior of all Jesuits in the Orient by appointment of his old friend of Paris, Inigo of Loyola.
