Saint Joseph of Anchieta

Joseph of Anchieta was born on March 19, 1534, in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands archipelago. He was the son of a Basque father — Juan López de Anchieta, a fervent devotee of the Virgin Mary and a relative of Saint Ignatius of Loyola — and of Mencía Díaz de Clavijo, of a noble Canarian family and of New Christian descent. He was baptized a few weeks later, on April 7, at the Parish of Our Lady of Remedies. At fourteen he crossed the sea for the first time, bound for Coimbra, in Portugal, to study at the Royal College of Arts.

It was there that God’s call became clear. On May 1, 1551, at seventeen years old, Joseph entered the Society of Jesus as a novice. He was a young man of intense faith and of an austerity so severe that it nearly ruined his health: an injury to his spine left him almost hunchbacked, and the bone tuberculosis that had afflicted him since his youth only grew worse. It was precisely this frailty that, by a design only God understands, opened the door to Brazil for him — it was believed that the climate there might do good for his ailing body.

When Father Manuel da Nóbrega asked for more missionaries for the evangelization of Brazil, even ones weak in body, Anchieta’s name was put forward. On July 13, 1553, not yet twenty years old, he landed in Salvador, in the Captaincy of the Bay of All Saints. He did not stay there long: he soon headed south, and by early 1554 he was among the thirteen Jesuits who climbed the Serra do Mar up to the plateau of Piratininga. It was there, on January 25, 1554, that the first Mass was celebrated — and from that small college the city of São Paulo was born. Years later, in 1565, he would also be among the founders of Rio de Janeiro.

What makes Anchieta unique is the way he loved that people. To proclaim the Gospel, he immersed himself in the language of the indigenous peoples and became the first to give a grammar to Old Tupi, with the work Arte de gramática da língua mais usada na costa do Brasil, of 1595. He wrote religious poems and plays to teach the faith — among them the celebrated Auto de São Lourenço — and for this he is regarded as the father of Brazilian literature and the first poet, grammarian, and playwright born in the Canary Islands. For more than forty years he spent himself entirely on this mission, until he was known to all as the Apostle of Brazil.

Saint Joseph of Anchieta died in Reritiba, on the coast of present-day Espírito Santo, on June 9, 1597. The memory of his holiness has crossed the centuries: he was beatified in 1980 by Saint Pope John Paul II and canonized on April 3, 2014, by Pope Francis. That same year he was declared patron of catechists, and in 2015 co-patron of Brazil by the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil.