[2] Goese historian Gomes Catão documented the town to have a population of 12,000, where wealthy ladies were carried to the churches by slaves in canopies.

[1] These claims have since been adopted into the popular memory of the inhabitants of Gandaulim, and Ragusans are now credited for the very construction of the church; however, the factual accuracy of this remains disputed.

[2][1][b] Serbian economic historian Nicholas Mirkovich had lamented in 1943 about the lack of contemporary Ragusan sources to draft a history of their exploits in India.

[3] Interest in the connection was revived in 1999, when Croatian Indologist Zdravka Matišić discovered a reference to ties between Ragusa and Goa by chance while studying Sanskrit texts in India.

[1][4][5] That same year, Croatian author Karmen Bašić noted that while nothing definitive could be said about Ragusan arrival and departure from Goa, there was a "substantial body of evidence and sources vouching for Ragusa’s presence" and its role in the global spice trade, though the notion of a colony linked to the Saint Blaise (São Brás) church at Gandaulim remained "somewhat of a mystery".