Michelangelo Tamburini, in 1712, and he was assigned to reopen the long dormant Jesuit Mission to Tibet [fr], which remained under the jurisdiction of the Society's Province of Goa.

From Goa he traveled to Surat, Ahmedabad, Rajasthan and Delhi, arriving in Agra (the seat of the Jesuit mission in Northern India) on 15 September 1714.

According to Desideri, they were well received by the Gyalpo, or King, of Ladakh and his court, and he wished to remain there to found a mission, but he was forced to obey his Superior, Fr.

After some months of intensive study he entered the Sera Buddhist monastery, one of the three great monastic universities of the politically ascendant Gelukpa sect.

There he both studied and debated with Tibetan Buddhist monks and scholars, and was permitted to offer the Tridentine Mass at a Roman Catholic altar in his rooms.

Desideri also used multiple quotations from the dharma and vinaya, and even brought the Scholasticism of St. Thomas Aquinas into a debate with the nihilistic Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna to argue his case for "the superiority of Christian theology.

Three Capuchins arrived in Lhasa in October 1716, and promptly presented documents to Desideri that they claimed confirmed their exclusive right to the Tibetan mission by the Propaganda.

He landed in France in August 1727, and after a stay in that country, where he met with important cardinals and aristocrats and had an audience with King Louis XV, he arrived in Rome in January 1728.

On 29 November 1732, the Propaganda issued its final terse order on the matter, confirming the exclusive right of the Capuchin Friars to the Tibet mission, and forbidding any further discussion on the subject.

[5] Manuscripts of his monumental works in multiple languages, comprising the first accurate account of Tibetan geography, government, agriculture, customs, and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and religious belief, were buried in the Jesuit archives and a private collection, and did not come to light until the late 19th century; the Relation finally appeared in a complete edition by Luciano Petech which was published in the 1950s.