Francesco Saverio, or the navarro Francisco Javier, left from Goa on Palm Sunday in 1549, arrived in Malacca and from there, on June 24, he embarked on a Chinese junk and sailed for three thousand miles until he reached the Japanese port of Kagoshima on August 15th. It had been exactly fifteen years since Montmartre, in the crypt of the Saint Denis chapel in Paris, had pronounced religious vows with the Basque Ignatius of Loyola and five other companions who studied philosophy and theology in Paris, the original nucleus of the Society of Jesus.
Pope Francis arrived in Japan and today speaks in Nagasaki and Hiroshima: