Catholic missions
work of the Catholic Church has often been undertaken outside the geographically defined parishes and dioceses by religious orders who have people and material resources to spare, and some of which specialized in missions. Eventually, parishes and dioceses would be organized worldwide, often after an intermediate phase as an apostolic prefecture or apostolic vicariate. Catholic mission has predominantly been carried out by the Latin Church in practice.
In the Roman Curia, missionary work is organised by the Dicastery for Evangelisation.
History
New Testament times
Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, Christian monasteries and missionaries fostered formal education and learning of religion, beyond the boundaries of the old Roman Empire. In the seventh century, Gregory the Great sent missionaries, including Augustine of Canterbury, into England. The Hiberno-Scottish mission began in 563 CE.In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Franciscans were sent as missionaries to the Near and Far East. Their travels took them as far as China, in an attempt to convert the advancing Mongols to Christianity, especially the Great Khans of the Mongol Empire.
Age of Discovery
During the Age of Discovery, the Catholic Church established a number of missions in the Americas and other colonies through the Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans in order to spread Catholicism in the New World and to convert the indigenous peoples of the Americas and other indigenous people. At the same time, missionaries such as Francis Xavier as well as other Jesuits, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans were moving into Asia and the Far East. The Portuguese sent missions into Africa. These are some of the most well-known missions in history.In the empires ruled by both Portugal and Spain, religion was an integral part of the state and evangelization was seen as having both secular and spiritual benefits. Wherever these powers attempted to expand their territories or influence, missionaries would soon follow. By the Treaty of Tordesillas, the two powers divided the world between them into exclusive spheres of influence, trade, and colonization. The Catholic world order was challenged by the Netherlands and England. Theoretically, it was repudiated by Grotius's Mare Liberum. Portugal's and Spain's colonial policies were also challenged by the Catholic Church itself. The Vatican founded the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in 1622 and attempted to separate the churches from the influence of the Iberian kingdoms.
While missions in areas ruled by Spanish and Portuguese, and to a lesser extent, the French, are associated with cultural imperialism and oppression, and often operated under the sponsorship and consent of colonial governments, those in other portions of the world were focused on the conversion of individuals within existing social and political structures, and often operated without the consent of local government.
India
Early missionaries
was a Franciscan sent to China to become prelate of Peking in around 1307. He traveled from Persia and moved down by sea to India in 1291, to the Madras region or "Country of St. Thomas". There he preached for thirteen months and baptized about one hundred people. From there Monte Corvino wrote home, in December 1291, giving one of the earliest noteworthy accounts of the Coromandel coast furnished by any Western European. Traveling by sea from Mailapur, he reached China in 1294, appearing in the capital "Cambaliech".Friar Odoric of Pordenone arrived in India in 1321. He visited Malabar, touching at Pandarani at Cranganore and at Kulam or Quilon, proceeding thence, apparently, to Ceylon and to the shrine of St Thomas at Maylapur near Madras. He writes that he had found the place where Thomas was buried.
The French Dominican missionary Father Jordanus Catalani followed in 1321–22. He reported to Rome, apparently from somewhere on the west coast of India, that he had given Christian burial to four martyred monks. Jordanus is known for his 1329 Mirabilia describing the marvels of the East: he furnished the best account of Indian regions and the Christians, the products, climate, manners, customs, fauna and flori given by any European in the Middle Ages – superior even to Marco Polo's.
In 1347, Giovanni de Marignolli visited the shrine of St Thomas near the modern Madras, and then proceeded to what he calls the kingdom of Saba and identifies with the Sheba of Scripture, but which seems from various particulars to have been Java. Taking ship again for Malabar on his way to Europe, he encountered great storms.
Another prominent Indian traveler was Joseph, priest over Cranganore. He journeyed to Babylon in 1490 and then sailed to Europe and visited Portugal, Rome, and Venice before returning to India. He helped to write a book about his travels entitled The Travels of Joseph the Indian which was widely disseminated across Europe.
Arrival of the Portuguese
The introduction of Catholicism in India begins from the first decade of 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese missionaries there. In the 16th century, the proselytization of Asia was linked to the Portuguese colonial policy. With the Papal bull Romanus Pontifex written on 8 January 1455 by Pope Nicholas V to King Afonso V of Portugal, the patronage for the propagation of the Christian faith in Asia was given to the Portuguese, who were rewarded with the right of conquest. The missionaries of the different orders flocked out with the conquerors, and began at once to build churches along the coastal districts wherever the Portuguese power made itself felt.The history of Portuguese missionaries in India starts with the neo-apostles who reached Kappad near Kozhikode on 20 May 1498 along with Vasco da Gama, which represented less than 2% of the total population and was the largest Christian church within India. He was seeking to form anti-Islamic alliances with pre-existing Christian nations. The lucrative spice trade attracted the Portuguese crown.
During the second expedition under Captain Pedro Álvares Cabral, the Portuguese fleet consisted of 13 ships and 18 priests anchored at Cochin on 26 November 1500. Cabral soon won the goodwill of the Raja of Cochin who allowed four priests to do apostolic work among the early Christian communities scattered in and around Cochin. Thus missionaries established a Portuguese mission in 1500. Dom Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese Viceroy, got permission from the Kochi Raja to build two church edifices – Santa Cruz Basilica and St. Francis Church using stones and mortar which were unheard of at that time, as local prejudices were against such a structure except for a royal palace or a temple.
In the beginning of the 16th century, the whole of the East was under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Lisbon. On 12 June 1514, Cochin and Goa became two prominent mission stations under the newly created Diocese of Funchal in Madeira, in the Atlantic. In 1534 Pope Paul III by the Bull Quequem Reputamus raised Funchal to an archdiocese with Goa as its suffragan, placing the whole of India under the diocese of Goa. This created an episcopal see – suffragan to Funchal, with a jurisdiction extending potentially over all past and future conquests from the Cape of Good Hope to China.
The first converts to Christianity in Goa were native Goan women who married Portuguese men that arrived with Afonso de Albuquerque during the Portuguese conquest of Goa in 1510.
During the mid-16th century, the city of Goa, was the center of Christianization in the East. The Portuguese rulers implemented state policies encouraging and even rewarding conversions among Hindu subjects, it would be false to ascribe the large number of conversions to force. The rapid rise of converts in Goa was mostly the result of Portuguese economic and political control over the Hindus, who were vassals of the Portuguese crown. At the same time many New Christians from Portugal migrated to India as a result of the inquisition in Portugal. Many of them were suspected of being Crypto-Jews, converted Jews who were secretly practicing their old religion, and were considered a threat to the solidarity of Christian belief. Saint Francis Xavier, in a 1545 letter to John III of Portugal, requested the Goan Inquisition, but it was not set up until 1560.
In 1557 Goa was made an independent archbishopric, with suffragan sees at Cochin and Malacca. The whole of the East was under the jurisdiction of Goa and its boundaries extended to almost half of the world: from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, to Burma, China, and Japan in East Asia. In 1576 the suffragan See of Macao was added, and in 1588 that of Funai in Japan.
In 1597 the death of the last metropolitan bishop, Archdeacon Abraham of the Saint Thomas Christians, an ancient body formerly part of the Church of the East gave the then Archbishop of Goa Menezes an opportunity to bring the native church under the authority of the Catholic Church. He was able to secure the submission of Archdeacon George, the highest remaining representative of the native church hierarchy. Menezes convened the Synod of Diamper between 20 and 26 June 1599, which introduced a number of reforms to the church and brought it fully into the Latin Church of the Catholic Church. Following the Synod, Menezes consecrated Jesuit Francis Ros as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Angamalé for the Saint Thomas Christians – another suffragan see to Archdiocese of Goa – and Latinisation of St Thomas Christians started. Most eventually accepted the Catholic faith but some switched to West Syrian rite. The Saint Thomas Christians were pressured to acknowledge the authority of the Pope. Resentment of these measures led to some part of the community to join the Archdeacon Thomas in swearing never to submit to the Portuguese or to accept Communion with Rome, in the Coonan Cross Oath in 1653.
The Diocese of Angamaly was transferred to Diocese of Craganore in 1605, and in 1606 a sixth suffragan see to Goa was established at San Thome, Mylapore, near the modern Madras. The suffragan sees added later to Goa were the prelacy of Mozambique in 1612 and Peking and Nanking in China in 1690.
Missionary work progressed on a large scale and with great success along the western coasts, chiefly at Chaul, Bombay, Salsette, Bassein, Damao, and Diu, as well as on the eastern coasts at San Thome of Mylapore as far as Bengal. In the southern districts the Jesuit mission in Madura was the most famous. It extended to the Krishna River, with a number of outlying stations beyond it. The mission of Cochin on the Malabar Coast was also one of the most fruitful. Several missions were also established in the interior northwards, e.g., that of Agra and Lahore in 1570 and that of Tibet in 1624. Still, even with these efforts, the greater part even of the coast line was by no means fully worked, and many vast tracts of the interior northwards were practically untouched.
With the decline of Portuguese power other colonial powers – the Dutch and British and Christian organisations – gained influence.