July 15 bl John Fernandez, S.J. d. 1570 #3 p 7-20-11

Good Morning:
110718
1852


July 15

Bl John Fernandez, S.J. d. 1570

I found this reference while perusing Saints and Angels’ daily calendar. I looked up John Fernandez in Joseph Tylenda’s Jesuit Saints and Martyrs to get more than the three sentence version. I did not get any more on John Fernandez but there is a longer blurb about the efforts of Bl Ignatius de Azevedo’s efforts to evangelize Brazil.

Fr. Azevedo was born in 1526, joined the Jesuits in 1548, and was ordained in 1553. In 1565, Fr Azevedo was the procurator for India and Brazil – probably because the source for Jesuit missionaries for these places was the Ibernian peninsula. Having undertaken a two plus year review of the efforts in Brazil, in 15769, Fr. Azevedo reported to the Jesuit Father General, Francis Borgia [a biggie among Jesuit saints], that the mission was thriving but was in need of more men.

Fr. Borgia sent Fr. Azevedo to recruit missionaries from among the Jesuits in Spain and Portugal. [Remember the sixteenth century colonization and exploration efforts of these two powerful countries. The Jesuits were supported by the States as well as the Church in their evangelization forays – for obvious reasons.]

Fr. Azevedo recruited seventy men – few were priests; most were scholastics and novices, some in their first weeks of novitiate. In 1967, if a Fr. Azevedo type came to Shadowbrook to recruit missionaries for the Jesuits, no doubt many of the novices and scholastics there would have jumped in with both feet. If being ‘unable’ to speak another language was not a barrier to traipsing off with the Church’s marines, I would probably have volunteered.

I remember how gung-ho we all were in our initial moments of expressing our vocation, tentatively confirmed by being accepted into the novitiate and given our very own Jesuit cassock. I wonder how many of the priests at Shadowbrook would have said yes to such an invitation. Being wiser and more prone to proper discernment, I bet, like in 1769, few would have gone. Each must be true to his own calling – and not cast aspersions upon others’ choices.

Fr. Azevedo gave his recruits five months of training before they got passage with a convoy of ships headed to Brazil, including one carrying the new Portuguese governor of the colony. Fr. Azevedo and 43 recruits were on the Santiago. They left Lisbon June 5, 1570.

First stop, Madeira on June 12th. They stayed in port until the end of the month.

Next stop, Canary Islands. Rumor had it, the waters were infested with French Corsairs. The governor decided to wait for safer waters. However, the captain of the Santiago had important cargo and decided head on. Fr. Azevedo told his recruits the dangers; a few decided to change ships.

On its way toward La Palma in the Canaries, the Santiago encountered pirate ships under the command of the French Huguenot, Jacques Souri. The Santiago’s crew took up arms. The Jesuits did one of three things: took over the crew’s regular duties, gathered on deck with Fr. Azevedo to pray, or went into the hold to pray. The corsairs easily came along side of the Santiago, boarded her, and overcame any resistance.

When the Huguenots saw Fr. Azevedo standing on deck holding a painting of the Virgin Mary, they directed their hatred toward him - - you have to recall the enmity between the Huguenots and the Catholics, between the French and the Portuguese and Spanish; all of which would be heightened in conflict at sea and upon seeing the Catholic priest standing before them saying: “You are my witness, I am dying for the Catholic faith and the Holy Roman Church.” The Huguenots gladly accommodated him.

The Huguenots then slaughtered and threw overboard the other Jesuits: one of whom was the Santiago’s captain’s nephew who asked permission to join the Jesuits upon his experience with them on this journey – when the Huguenots came down into the hold, this John put on a cassock and was martyred with the others

How do we know all this about the actual slaughter of the Jesuits for our faith by the Huguenots? John Sanchez was spared martyrdom because the pirates needed a cook and pressed him into their service. When the pirates docked at the Huguenot stronghold in the corsairs’ home port, John Sanchez escaped and made his way back to Portugal.

John Fernandez is a Jesuit martyr who died with Blessed Ignatius de Azevedo and companions. Born at Braga about 1547, Portugal, he entered the Jesuits June 1569, and soon thereafter set out with the other Jesuits for Brazil. They were all slain by the Huguenot captain of the ship near the Canary Islands.

Pope Pius IX beatified these martyrs in 1854. I wonder what made this the time for the beatification of Jesuits/Portuguese/Spanish/New World missionaries? What story did these men tell to the Church in the late nineteenth century? To Pius IX? To the Jesuits reconstituted? To their homelands? To their missionary lands?

The Jesuits celebrate the martyrdom of these ‘Brazilian Martyrs’ on January 19.

AMDG

wtn
1939