Diogo Carvalho

Diogo Carvalho , Spanish Diego Carvalho , German Jakob Carvalho (* 1578 in Coimbra , Portugal ; † February 22, 1624 in Sendai , Japan ) was a Portuguese Jesuit , missionary , martyr , blessed . He is one of the many Portuguese missionaries martyred in Japan.

Life

Carvalho was born to Alvaro Fernandes and Margarida Luis. At the age of 16 he joined the Jesuits. Even as a teenager, he wanted to go to mission . So he was sent to Macau , China , where he studied theology and philosophy and was ordained a priest in 1600. For five years he first evangelized in what is now Kyōto . At the end of 1614 he went to Vietnam , where he also worked as a missionary, but returned to Japan again in 1617. He went to Hondō , from where he evangelized.

He was also in Hokkaidō twice . He became the first ever priest in Hokkaidō and the first European to meet the native Japanese people of the Ainus . In a letter he was the first to describe this people in detail.

martyrdom

In the years between 1623 and 1624, all Christians in the Hokkaidō region were subjected to severe persecution. He and eleven other Christians fled to the mountains in the hope that they would not be found there. However, since the footprints could be seen in the snow, Carvalho and his companions were quickly found. On February 18, 1624, everyone was forced to strip naked and immerse themselves in cold water. In the water they had to stand up for hours and then sit down again to get into the chicane. When they were pulled out of the water, two of them were already dead, dying of exhaustion. The whole procedure lasted four full days, the aim was to force the believers to renounce their faith , but no one did that. On February 22nd, 1624, the procedure was continued for the entire afternoon, when in the end Carvalho was the only survivor. All along he had been encouraging his fellow sufferers. One had strengthened oneself through prayer. At sunset he was alone; then shortly before midnight Carvalho died himself. The corpses were cut up in the morning and thrown into the river.

beatification

On July 7, 1867, Carvalho was from Pope Pius IX. beatified. The martyr's head has been preserved as a relic to this day. The feast day is February 22nd, the anniversary of Carvalho's death.

swell

• Lexicon of Names and Saints, Nikol-Verlag, 2002.
• Image dictionary of the saints, Pattloch-Verlag, 1999.
• www.elosclubedelisboa.blogs.sapo.pt/38159.html