An ancient; awe-inspiring relic last month took its place in the mounting struggle between pagan- ism and Christianity in Japan. From Rome, where it had been enshrined since the year 1614, the remarkably well-preserved right arm of St. Francis Xavier (above), a historic relic of Catholicism, was returned to one of the scenes of the great evangelist’s labors. It was just 400 years since Spanish-born Xavier had come to Japan. While there he had converted hundreds of people to the Catholic faith and had helped to plant the seed of Christianity in a hostile and pagan land. When he died in 1552, on his way to new work in China, his body was buried but was later exhumed, and the right arm was severed and sent to Rome by the Jesuits. The rest of the body now lies in a church in India.
There was good reason for the arm’s return. St. Francis himself had had plenty of opposition from the Buddhists during his campaign to Christianize Japan. Now, in a different form, opposition was still strong. Their faith in old gods undermined by the war, many Japanese were turning either to political action or to Christian prayer. But Communism was gaining more converts than Christianity; Protestants counted 200,000 church members (p. 52), Roman Catholics 130,000-but Communists rolled up three million votes in the January election. This month General MacArthur asked for more Bibles to aid in the fight and the Catholics were exhibiting Xavier’s arm to vast crowds in many cities, like bomb-ravaged Nagasaki (next page) to dramatize their campaign for converts.
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