ST FRANCIS XAVIER PATRON OF PIAZZA ARMERINA ENNA

4° joint Patron Saint of Piazza, St Francis Xavier of Piazza Armerina Enna in Sicilia

San Francis Xavier was born in 1506 in Spain, Javier (Navarre), into a noble family.
He was a fellow student, in the College of St. Barbara (at the Sorbonne) in Paris, of Ignatius of Loyola and Pierre Favre with whom he made his first vows (poverty, chastity, and pilgrimage to the Holy Land) from which would eventually founded the society of Jesus.

He received the degree of "master of Arts" and then enroll in the Faculty of Theology, receiving his doctorate. In 1534 he decided to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in 1540 he traveled to India, but had to stop in Mozambique because seriously ill. Just healed reached Goa, civil and religious capital of the Portuguese Empire in India.

There he founded missions and moved to Malacca (Malaysia) and the Moluccas (Indonesia).
In 1549 arrived in southern Japan continuing the apostolate. In 1551 he returned from Japan, leaving about 1,000 worshipers, the following year in Goa became head of the new province of the order established by Saint Ignatius. After a few months left for Malacca where he fell seriously ill dying in 1552 at the age of 46 years.

His body rests in the Cathedral of Goa, and his right arm is found in Rome in the Church of the Gesł. He was a healer in life and after death. Many miracles obtained for his intecessione by God. Even the city of Piazza experienced such miracles in the early part of ' 600 and our ancestors proclaimed him patron and protector, honouring him with an altar dedicated to him in the Church of St. Ignatius (the last on the right next to the vestry) where you can see the figure of the " "crab on the lintel (top photo) ¹.

About the "crab", one day during a storm, St Francis Xavier lost the crucifix that hung around her neck. A few days later, while he was sitting on a Japanese beach, the sea emerged a crab with the crucifix lost between the claws that I gave up. By popular demand of sovereigns and were beatified in 1619 and raised to the altars (Holy) in 1622, also was declared "patron of the missions" in 1927. Regarding the choice of the name of the new Pope, someone had thought it had been made for this Holy of the Jesuit order.

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¹ It infringes the exact year of the proclamation to Patron of Piazza, but the period shrinks among the Proclamation of 3°, Saint cajetan in 1641, and the 5th, St. John of God in 1680. crab symbol picture on the altar in the Church of Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier

ST FRANCIS XAVIER PATRON OF PIAZZA ARMERINA ENNA

GAETANO MASUZZO, Piazza Armerina