Father José de Anchieta, founder of São Paulo, is canonized

Pope Francis promulgated on Thursday (Apr. 3) the decree of canonization of José de Anchieta, one of the Jesuit priests who founded the city of São Paulo.

Known in Brazil as Padre Anchieta, the missionary is held by the Catholic Church as an outstanding evangelist. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980 and became a saint without proven miracles.

His canonization process was initiated over 400 years ago. Odilo Pedro Scherer, Archbishop of São Paulo, blamed the delay on a “smear campaign” on the Jesuit order.

Next May 4, during the 52nd General Assembly of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), a Thanksgiving Mass will be held at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, São Paulo state, to celebrate his canonization.

José de Anchieta was born in Spain in 1534. After joining the Society of Jesus, he came to Brazil as a missionary in 1553. In 1554, he arrived in the captaincy of São Vicente, where, along with the Provincial of Brazil, Manoel da Nóbrega, he founded what would become the city of São Paulo. A school was erected on the site, where he began his work as a missionary.

Anchieta worked actively in what CNBB calls America’s first Jesuit school. He taught Portuguese to children of indigenous and Portuguese descent. Additionally, Father Anchieta was versed in the language of the natives, in which he wrote a book of catechism, as well as several plays and hymns. He is also the author of the first grammar of the Tupi language.

Over the years, in his career as a missionary, he worked in the Jesuit missions already in progress in the country in several places from the south of São Paulo all the way to Recife, in the Northeast. Anchieta is responsible for the beginning of the construction of Santa Casa da Misericórdia, created in Rio de Janeiro in 1582 to treat victims of the several epidemics common at the time and a number of illnesses.

Father Anchieta took special care of the sick and the poor, as well as indigenous groups in danger and black slaves. José de Anchieta died on June 9, 1597, and became known as the “Apostle of Brazil.”

He is the third saint bearing a connection with Brazil. There is also Pauline of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus, known in Brazil as Madre Paulina, born in a territory initially Austrian, which today belongs to Italy. She lived in Brazil and was canonized in 2002. Another saint is Anthony of St. Ann Galvão, or Frei Galvão, born in the state of São Paulo and canonized in 2007.

Translated by Mayra Borges and Fabrício Ferreira