Jesuit Mission

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Jesuits worked as missionaries in Asia (India, Indonesia, Japan, China, Philippines, Tibet, Indochina) and America, but also in Christian Ethiopia and in the sense of the Counter-Reformation in Europe.

Enthusiasm for the pagan mission aroused above all the letters of the Jesuit missionary Francisco de Xavier. Numerous young Jesuits asked to be sent to the mission. In the archives of the Jesuits in Rome, about 22,000 letters of application () from the 17th and 18th centuries are preserved.

Classification
Historically, there are two stages of the Jesuit mission:
the "old mission": from 1542 (arrival of Franz Xaver in Goa) until the abolition of the Jesuit order in 1773
the “new mission”: since the restoration of the Order in 1814

In the second half of the 19th century In the 19th century, however, the Jesuit mission in Asia and Africa got clear Protestant, especially Anglo-American competition. Since the 1980s, the Jesuit mission has increased again.

Asia

India
In 1539, the Portuguese King John III requested. Pope Paul III. missionaries for the Portuguese possessions in East India. After his appointment as Apostolic Nuncio for the whole of Asia, Francisco de Xavier y Jassu set out from Lisbon to India in 1541 and landed on the 6th. May 1542 in Goa. For three years he worked with great success in Goa, with the pearl fishermen and in the southern Indian area of Travancore.

Since Indians were often baptized out of opportunism, the problem arose that they soon returned to their old faith or adhered to their old rituals. In order to preserve the purity of the teaching, Franz Xaver finally asked the Portuguese king to send the Inquisition to India, which arrived there a few years later. From 1545 onwards, Franz Xaver missioned on the back Indian peninsula of Malacca and on several islands of the Moluccas discovered by the Portuguese in present-day Indonesia.

From 1604 the Jesuit Roberto de Nobili worked in India. Through his strong adaptation to Indian culture and life reality, he aroused the displeasure of other missionaries and had to answer to the bishop in Goa in 1619.

Japan

In Malacca, after his return in 1547, Francisco de Xavier met the Samurai Yajirō of Satsuma, whose reports convinced him to bring the Christian faith to Japan. After regulating religious affairs in Goa, which served as a kind of basis for his missionary activity, he began the voyage to Nippon in 1549. August 15, 1549 is the day of his arrival at the port of Kagoshima on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Francisco de Xavier spent about three years in Japan with mission tasks. He founded the first Christian community in Yamaguchi. He was not admitted to Japanese Emperor in Miyako (today: Kyōto) in 1551. Nevertheless, his missionary activity was very successful. He and his successors were able to convert several Daimyo, the first of which was in 1563