Catholic missions

Missionary work of the Catholic Church has often been undertaken outside the geographically defined parishes and dioceses by religious orders who have people and material resources to spare, and some of which specialized in missions.

During the Middle Ages, Christian monasteries and missionaries (such as Saint Patrick and Adalbert of Prague) fostered formal education and learning of religion, beyond the boundaries of the old Roman Empire.

In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Franciscans (such as William of Rubruck, John of Montecorvino, and Giovanni ed' Magnolia) were sent as missionaries to the Near and Far East.

While missions in areas ruled by Spanish and Portuguese, and to a lesser extent, the French, are associated with cultural imperialism and oppression, and often operated under the sponsorship and consent of colonial governments, those in other portions of the world (notably Matteo Ricci's Jesuit mission to China, and the work of other Jesuit missionaries in the Nagasaki region in Japan) were focused on the conversion of individuals within existing social and political structures, and often operated without the consent of local government.

From there Monte Corvino wrote home, in December 1291 (or 1292), giving one of the earliest noteworthy accounts of the Coromandel coast furnished by any Western European.

He visited Malabar, touching at Pandarani (20 m. north of Calicut) at Cranganore and at Kulam or Quilon, proceeding thence, apparently, to Ceylon and to the shrine of St Thomas at Maylapur near Madras.

Jordanus is known for his 1329 Mirabilia describing the marvels of the East: he furnished the best account of Indian regions and the Christians, the products, climate, manners, customs, fauna and flori given by any European in the Middle Ages – superior even to Marco Polo's.

In 1347, Giovanni de Marignolli visited the shrine of St Thomas near the modern Madras, and then proceeded to what he calls the kingdom of Saba and identifies with the Sheba of Scripture, but which seems from various particulars to have been Java.

With the Papal bull Romanus Pontifex[2] written on 8 January 1455 by Pope Nicholas V to King Afonso V of Portugal, the patronage for the propagation of the Christian faith (see "Padroado") in Asia was given to the Portuguese, who were rewarded with the right of conquest.

This created an episcopal see – suffragan to Funchal, with a jurisdiction extending potentially over all past and future conquests from the Cape of Good Hope to China.

[13] Resentment of these measures led to some part of the community to join the Archdeacon Thomas in swearing never to submit to the Portuguese or to accept Communion with Rome, in the Coonan Cross Oath in 1653.

Still, even with these efforts, the greater part even of the coast line was by no means fully worked, and many vast tracts of the interior northwards were practically untouched.

[15] Jesuit Fathers Francisco Xavier,[16][17] Cosme de Torres, and John Fernandes were the first to arrive at Kagoshima with hopes of bringing Christianity and Catholicism to Japan.

This fait accompli was approved in Pope Gregory XIII's papal bull of 1575, which decided that Japan belonged to the Portuguese diocese of Macau.

Members of the Jesuit delegation to China were perhaps the most influential Christian missionaries in that country between the earliest period of the religion up until the 19th century, when significant numbers of Catholic and Protestant missions developed.

The Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares reached Guangdong in 1513, establishing direct maritime connection between China and Europe; within six years of the Jesuit's 1540 founding, two Chinese boys were enrolled in their college in Goa, India.

One of them, known by his baptismal name Antonio, travelled with the Jesuit founder St Francis Xavier when he tried to begin missionary work in China in the early 1550s.

Alessandro Valignano, the new regional manager ("visitor") of the order, came to Macau in 1578–1579 and established St. Paul's College to begin training future missionaries in the language and culture of the Chinese.

He requested assistance from the orders' members in Goa in bringing over suitably talented linguists to staff the college and begin the mission in earnest.

In 1582, Jesuits once again initiated mission work inside China, introducing Western science, mathematics, astronomy[broken anchor], and cartography.

Missionaries such as Matteo Ricci and Johann Adam Schall von Bell wrote Chinese catechisms[18] and made influential converts like Xu Guangqi, establishing Christian settlements throughout the country and becoming close to the imperial court, particularly its Ministry of Rites, which oversaw official astronomy and astrology.

"Jesuits were accepted in late Ming court circles as foreign literati, regarded as impressive especially for their knowledge of astronomy, calendar-making, mathematics, hydraulics, and geography.

[citation needed] Clark has summarized as follows: "When all is said and done, one must recognize gladly that the Jesuits made a shining contribution to mission outreach and policy in China.

Acting on the complaint of the Bishop of Fujian,[24][25] Pope Clement XI finally ended the dispute with a decisive ban in 1704;[26] his legate Charles-Thomas Maillard De Tournon issued summary and automatic excommunication of any Christian permitting Confucian rituals as soon as word reached him in 1707.

[27] By that time, however, Tournon and Bishop Maigrot had displayed such extreme ignorance in questioning before the throne that the Kangxi Emperor mandated the expulsion of Christian missionaries unable to abide by the terms of Ricci's Chinese catechism.

[28][24][29] Tournon's policies, confirmed by Clement's 1715 bull Ex Illa Die..., led to the swift collapse of all of the missions across China,[28] with the last Jesuits—obliged to maintain allegiance to the papal rulings—finally being expelled after 1721.

[30] Although Catholic mission work began again following the opening up of the country after the Treaty of Nanking in the 1830s, it was not until 1939 that the church revisited its stance on Chinese customs.

The influence of the Franciscans, considering that missionaries are sometimes seen as tools of imperialism,[33] enabled other objectives to be reached, such as the extension of Spanish language, culture, and political control to the New World.

In 2016 Pope Francis formed a Department for Promoting Integral Human Development in the Roman Curia to oversee numerous Catholic outreach programs fostered directly by the Vatican.