Goa (India), 4 April 2013: The officials of Basilica of Bom Jesus in the Western Indian
State of Goa are planning to invite Pope Francis for the 2014 exposition of pioneering
Jesuit St. Francis Xavier.
The chances of the first Jesuit pontiff arriving
in the state are "bright,” said Fr. Savio Barretto, rector of the Basilica of Bom
Jesus, where the mortal remains of the saint are kept.
He said that Basilica
officials have received many enquiries about inviting pope to the event, reported
UCA News.
“We will be calling the Pope and request the Indian government to
formally make a request to the Vatican city also,” he said.
During the event
the relics of the saint, kept in a silver casket elevated inside the Basilica, are
exposed or being brought to ground level. The exposition generally happens every ten
years and the last was held in 2004 December for about one month. The next is due
in November 2014.
"The chances of Pope Francis coming for the exposition look
good because he may not even need an invitation to visit the resting place of his
fellow Jesuit brother," the priest said.
St. Francis Xavier, who hailed from
Navarra in the Basque region of Spain, heralded Christianity in several part of Asia,
after he arrived in Goa, the then Portuguese capital in 1542.
After his death
in 1552 in Shangchuan, China, his body was first ferried to Malacca in Malaysia, and
later stored in 1553 in the grand Basilica of Bom Jesus.
Believers regard it
as a miracle that the body has survived for nearly 500 years, while skeptics have
historically argued that the mortal remains of the saint have been embalmed to ensure
its survival.
Every year, more than a million believers throng the church complex
in Old Goa, located a short distance from here.
Catholics account for nearly
25 percent of the state's population of 1.4 million. Source: UCAN