The ghost of St Francis Xavier
There he lies, in the Basicalla of the Bom Jesus, St. Francis Xavier, king of the Jesuits. He's on top in the silver coffin.
I think it's a tourism marketing thing that they don't put atrocious things that people did on their tomb sites. I mean the muslim/mughal tombs up in Delhi don't say anything about them being hated.
Likewise ,the word inquisition comes up maybe once in the whole display here. To be fair to old FX there, he was not actually the one running the official Inquisition in Goa. But he ran the unofficial activities before that, and unsatified with the lackadsical smashing of hindu shrines, he petitioned the pope to set up a more formal one here.
It's stuff like this that still fuels things today. India recently got a little lecture from the pope on something in their laws that actually makes converting others to yuor religion illegal. Well padre....can you blame them?
But you reap what you sow...after his death though they buthered him like a hog....which coincidentally is something they do across the other street from the Se Cathedral. ( I mean it's a butcher shop , not a slaughter house...but it's set up about as sanitarily as the pan-wallah's stand. Now I like pork , but not if it's still got hair on the other side. )
Anyway , the reward in the 1700's for having a body that did not decay ( in case you're not catholic that's what happens with saints) , was for it to be neatly partitioned into relics. The honorable Xavier's right arm was shipped off to Rome, most of his internal organs found their way to chuches in Asia. A spleen here, a gallbladder there....etc.
So once every 10 years, the majority of ol' FX's body is paraded around the town.
There were some school children from Punjab getting a lecture on it all. They made me take pictures with them, this has been one of the most fun parts of being here, the rockstar treatment.
Who knows they probably though I was bringing more Jesuits with me....
