Pope Leo XIV honors witness of first Lithuanian Jesuit in India
Four centuries ago, a Jesuit from Lithuania, Fr Andrius Rudamina, crossed oceans and cultures, arriving in Goa, India, in 1625 with a heart set on spreading the Good News of the Gospel.
Marking the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Fr Rudamina in India, Pope Leo XIV joined the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman in their commemoration of the event and sent a telegram in which he gave thanks for Fr Rudamina’s witness.
Born into a noble family, Rudamina studied at the Jesuit college in Vilnius. He studied philosophy in Germany and enrolled at the University of Leuven in Belgium. Shortly after, he returned to Vilnius and entered into the Society of Jesus. In 1622, he was sent to study theology in Rome, and received permission to go on missions.
Fr Rudamina made the journey from Europe to Asia at the age of 29, together with 11 other Jesuits, at a time when intercontinental travel was long and perilous. Upon his arrival in India, he spent the next year of his life serving in monasteries, prisons, and hospitals before he contracted malaria and was transferred to China. Rudamina spent the next years working first in Hangzhou and then in Fuzhou. He died of tuberculosis in China in September 1631. He was the first Jesuit priest from Lithuania to arrive in India.
In the telegram signed on 25 August by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Pope prayed that the celebration of the generosity and courage of Fr Rudamina in bringing the Gospel to all peoples would “encourage many in our own times to respond with similar patience and ingenuity to the task of evangelization”.
Highlighting the foundations of Fr. Rudamina’s “missionary zeal and impressive legacy of dialogue and cultural integration”, Pope Leo encouraged the Archdiocese to continue to foster “both ecumenical and interreligious dialogue that can serve as a model for all in society of fraternal harmony, reconciliation, and concord”.
The Pope closed the telegram with an apostolic blessing for everyone celebrating this anniversary “as a pledge of joy and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ”.
In 2015, a memorial stone dedicated to Fr Andrius Rudamina was unveiled by Archbishop of Goa and Daman, Cardinal Filipe Neri António Sebastião do Rosário Ferrão.
[Photos: Curtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania]
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