35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘A FLAME OF FAITH’
These shrines told you what territory you were in. From where
the workers’ symbol was worshipped, we’d travelled through a land
protected by Siva’s tubby mutant son, and had now moved into the
realm of the goddess Mary. Crossing the broad Zuari River, we
entered yet another sphere of influence. The architecture of Goa is
unmistakably Iberian: broad, low roofs covered with curved
terracotta tiles, faded ochre plasterwork, shaded courtyards, deep
balconies and verandas. But Goa Velha, Old Goa, through which
we motored first, was once called ‘The Rome of the Orient.’ Now
it’s an overgrown area of ghostly ruins, for the most part, far from
the impossibly overbuilt walled-in city it must once have been.
Only the most ambitiously conceived structures have survived,
and these are all religious: convents, churches, seminaries. Of the
thirty-odd buildings that existed when Sir Richard Burton visited in
1846, over a dozen are more or less intact.
The most striking of these is the Basilica of Bom Jesus. Elevated
from its status in Burton’s time, Bom Jesus stands out because it is
red, the lateritic slabs left unplastered, and because a line of soaring
doublearched flying buttresses prop up its open side wall. What
struck me most, however, were the thousands of people waiting in
long, unruly lines to enter its mighty doors – on a Wednesday
afternoon. Could Christianity be this popular here?
Our driver supplied the answer: the ‘incorruptible’ body of Saint
Francis Xavier was currently on display inside the basilica, an event
that only occurred every twelve years or so. People were waiting ‘for
saint’s darshan.’ We stopped the car.
With Saint Ignatius Loyola, Xavier cofounded the Jesuit order.
The two of them had divided up the world as their spheres of activity,
Loyola taking Europe, Xavier choosing a more ambitious project:
the entire Orient.
Xavier embodies and exemplifies the bewildering contradictions
of his order. Hardworking, deeply committed to elevating the
human condition, compassionate, as he wrote himself, he ‘lived in
a hospital, confessing the sick and giving them Holy Communion.’
Yet he also inflicted sadistic punishments on those who failed to
conform to the standards he set. Although he pitied the slaves he
saw marched through the streets of both Lisbon and Goa, he
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