Franciscan missions

St. Francis devoted himself to missionary labours from 1219 to 1221, and devoted in his rule a special chapter (xii) to missions. In every part of the world, the Franciscans have laboured with the greatest devotion, self-sacrifice, enthusiasm and success, even though, as the result of persecutions and wars, the result of their toil has not always been permanent. The four friars sent to Morocco in 1219 under Berard of Carbio (q.v.) were martyred in 1220. Electus soon shared their fate, and in 1227 Daniel with six companions was put to death at Ceuta. The bishops of Morocco were mostly Franciscans or Dominicans.

The two Genoese ships which circumnavigated Africa in 1291 had two Minorites on board. Others accompanied Vasco da Gama. In 1446 the Franciscans visited Cape Verde where Roger, a Frenchman, zealously preached the Gospel. In 1459 they reached Guinea, of which Alphonsus of Bolano was named Prefect Apostolic in 1472. They thence proceeded to the Congo, where they baptized a king. In 1500 they went to Mozambique under Alvarez of Coimbra.

In Northern Europe, which in the thirteenth century was not yet completely converted to Christianity, the Franciscans established missions in Lithuania, whee thirty-six were butchered in 1325. The first Bishop of Lithuania was Andreas Vazilo. During the fifteenth century John, surnamed «the Small», and Blessed Ladislaus of Gielniow laboured most successfully in this district. In Prussia (now the provinces of West and East Prussia), Livonia, and Courland (where the Minorite Albert was Bishop of Marienwerder (1260-90) and founded the town of Reisenburg), as well as in Lapland, the inhabitants of which were still heathens, the Reformation put an end to the labours of the Friars Minor. Their numerous houses in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, which formed the province of Denmark (Dania, Dacia), and the provinces of England, Scotland, and to some extent those of Holland and Germany, were also overthrown. After the year 1530, the Franciscans could work in these lands only as missionaries, in which capacity they laboured there from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century and still continue to a certain extent.

Between 1520 and 1650 more than 500 Minorites laid down their lives for the Church. On the Black and Caspian Seas the Franciscans instituted missions about 1270. The following Franciscans laboured in Greater Armenia: James of Russano in 1233; Andrew of Perugia in 1247; Thomas of Tolentino in 1290. King Haito (Ayto) II of Lesser Armenia, and Jean de Brienne, Emperor of Constantinople, both entered the Franciscan Order. Franciscans were in Persia about 1280, and again after 1460. About this time Louis of Bologna went through Asia and Russia to rouse popular sentiment against the Turks. The Franciscans were in Further India by 1500, and toiled among the natives, the St. Thomas Christians, and the Portuguese, who made over to them the mosque of Goa seized in 1510. The order had colleges and schools in India long before the arrival of the Jesuits, who first came under the Franciscan Archbishop of Goa, Joao Albuquerque (1537-53).

Since 1219 the Franciscans have maintained a mission in the Holy Land, where, after untold labours and turmoil and at the expense of hundreds of lives, they have, especially since the fourteenth century, recovered the holy places dear to Christians. Here they built houses for the reception of pilgrims, to whom they gave protection and shelter. Friars from every country compose the so-called custody of the Holy Land, whose work in the past, interrupted by unceasing persecutions and massacres, constitutes a bloody but glorious page in the history of the order. In the territory of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, reinstituted in 1847, the Franciscans have 24 convents, and 15 parishes; in Syria (the Prefecture Apostolic of Aleppo), to which also belong Phoenicia and Armenia, they have 20 convents and 15 parishes, while in Lower Egypt they occupy 16 convents and 16 parishes.