Before they left, they were invited to celebrate the holy mysteries after their own fashion: 'They prepared for it a beautiful place fit for prayer, where there was a kind of oratory.

[3] Francis Xavier wrote a letter from Cochin to king John III of Portugal on 26 January 1549, in which he declared "A bishop of Armenia (Mesopotamia by the name of Yaqob Abuna has been serving God and Your Highness in these regions for forty·five years.

He is being helped here solely by the priests of St. Francis Y. H. should write a very affectionate letter to him, and one of its paragraphs should include an order recommending him to the governors, to the veadores da fazenda, and to the captains of Cochin so that he may receive the honour and respect which he deserves when he comes to them with a request on behalf of the Christians of St. Thomas Your Highness should write to him and earnestly entreat him to undertake the charge of recommending you to God, since YH.

"[2][6] In that same year Francis Xavier also wrote to his jesuit colleague and Provincial of Portugal, Fr.Simon Rodrigues giving him the following description: »Fifteen thousand paces from Cochin there is a fortress owned by the king with the name of Ctanganore.

It has a beautiful college, built by Frey Wcente, a companion of the bishop, in which there are easily a hundred students, sons of native Christians, who are named after St. Thomas.

[2][6] This attitude of St. Francis Xavier and the Franciscans before him does not reflect any of the animosity and intolerance that kept creeping in with the spread of the Tridentine spirit of the Counter-Reformation which tended to foster a uniformity of belief and practice.

On his death bed he asked his friend Pero Sequeira to redeem for him the Knai Thoma copper plate grant recording the privileges of the Knanaya community, about which he had written to the king of Portugal in 1523, but which he had later given in pledge to a man in the interior for twenty cruzados.