>From the JOSEPH NAIK VAZ INSTITUTE Berkeley, California April 21, 2010 is the 359th birth anniversary of one of Goa's greatest sons.
Please share this message with your children and grandchildren as they honor their Goan roots and take pride in Goan achievements. Please also forward this message to your family and friends. BLESSED JOSEPH VAZ was made Patron of the Archdiocese of Goa, Daman, on Jan 16, 2000. He died 299 years ago on Jan 16, 1711. Little is known about our own Indian-born saints with the emphasis typically on European saints who came to Goans through colonial history. Please request your church leaders to honor great Goans like Blessed Vaz and Venerable Fr. Agnelo and make them saints. Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the Beatification "I came to Sri Lanka above all to honor Blessed Joseph Vaz. Like a star shining in the Asian sky, this great spiritual guide teaches us many lessons about the goodness of the human person and the nobility of our destiny as human beings." January 21, 1995 Life of Blessed Joseph Vaz Apostle of Kanara and Sri Lanka (1651-1711) 1651 Born in Benaulim, Goa, India, on April 21. 1676 Is ordained a priest. Shortly after, volunteers to go to Sri Lanka where the Dutch were persecuting Catholics and had banned all priests from entering the island. The Chapter of Goa refuses his offer because the mission would have meant certain death for him. 1681 Is sent to rescue the almost extinct mission in Kanara, present-day Karnataka in India. Rebuilds the Church in Mangalore and Kanara, establishes missions, tends to the sick, ransoms prisoners. 1684 Returns to Goa and joins a band of native Indian priests who formed a community. 1685 Founds the Indian branch of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, on September 25. 1686 Leaves Goa secretly and sets out for Sri Lanka. 1687 Arrives in Jaffna in the Tamil region of Sri Lanka, with a servant, John Vaz, both disguised as coolies. He works with a price on his head.1691 Is almost captured by the Dutch and is advised to go to Kandy. Is brought into Kandy in chains and imprisoned as a Portuguese spy by the Buddhist King, Vimaladharma Surya II. 1693 Works a miracle of rain during a severe drought. The King releases him and gives him protection and freedom to preach in his kingdom. As in Goa and in Mangalore, is often seen in ecstasy in prayer. The people call him "Sammana Swami" or Angelic Father. 1697 Is joined by three of his Indian Oratorians from Goa. During a small-pox epidemic in Kandy, the King and the people flee the capital. Fr. Vaz and Fr. Carvalho, tend to the dying and abandoned victims for almost two years. 1705 Dedicates the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu. 1711 Dies in Kandy on January 16, after 23 years of arduous missionary work in Sri Lanka. The Work of Blessed Joseph Vaz His missionary work was not colonial, not helped, authorized, associated with conquest by a colonial power. He gained the protection of a non-Christian King, Vimaladharma Surya II of Kandy, a devout Buddhist. He used inculturation as a missionary method. He founded a Catholic para-liturgy and literature using the two languages and cultures of Sri Lanka, Tamil and Sinhalese; he practiced and taught Meditation. He educated his servant John Vaz, a member of the Indigenous tribe of Kunbis, and sent him back to Goa with a letter of recommendation to the priesthood. At that time, the Portuguese Church Councils reserved the priesthood only for the two higher castes in Goa. He founded the miraculous Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu, one of the five officially crowned Marian Shrines of the Church, crowned in 1924, before Fatima. He is the first non-European native in modern times to found a Mission and Church in a "Third World" country; to found a fully native Catholic Religious Congregation; and to be given the official title of "Apostle" (of Kanara and Sri Lanka) by the Church, for his work in rescuing the Church there. His Indian Oratorian Mission is the only fully native, non-European Catholic Mission of our colonial era. The Church he re-founded in Sri Lanka was persecuted and survived isolation from Rome for 140 years: "Here is a country in which the faith was first preached, and a Church founded with great success to flourish for over a century, by missionaries who, being afterwards forced by the political failure of their nation to abandon the field, left this island for good and their converts... without churches or priests and under the heel of a persecutor; and a single priest (Joseph Vaz) from another country, came here of his own accord......and laboring heroically with a price upon his head, revived the faith" and made many conversions in the teeth of persecution, imprisonment and hostility..(no) subsequent political, social, and ecclesiastical changes in the country were ever able to undo his work;....it must be stated with caution and subject to correction, but no other instance of such an achievement is known in Christendom. Sri Lankan historian, Fr. S.G. Perera, S.J., from his book, The Life of the Venerable Father Joseph Vaz Novena Prayer for the Canonization of Blessed Joseph Vaz O God of infinite goodness! Full of confidence in Your kindness and in the mercy which You showed to Your faithful servant, Blessed Joseph Vaz we humbly implore You to inspire our Holy Church to take into consideration the meritorious life and apostolic works of this Servant of God and to grant him the full honors of the altar and public devotion, if this is for Your greater glory and for our salvation, so that imitating his virtues and placing ourselves under his patronage, we will reach Eternal Glory. Amen. O God, through the intercession of Blessed Joseph Vaz, grant me the grace of ...........Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be to the Father. Imprimatur. Goa, India, August 5, 1931. + Teotonio, Patriarch of Goa and the Indies.
