MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE

Francis was the first founder of an order whose adherents could, if they so wished, go among the saracents and other believers’. Thus right from the time of Francis himself there was an enormous missionary expansion, especially eastward in moslem countries for at least a century. Afterwards, though there was a slight decline for some time, it was known to pick up all they were sponsored by the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. Naturally the capuchin who steered this aspect strongly gave great importance to the missionary vocation of the reform, even though the actual possibilities of sending missionaries st the time were rather few. The order in fact could organize some missionary enterprise only from end of the 16th century. All the same one cannot but put on record the wonderful missionary enterprise of the capuchins. For when church founded the ‘propaganda fide’ in 1622 for the ‘evangelization of the peoples’, it was the capuchins who were its first main forces. Just a decade thereafter in 1632 they were seen already crossing lands and ocean and arriving at the shores of our own mother-land India. Gradually the field of missionary activity was amply widened to spread everywhere. It saw great expansion, beginning from the Christian orient to all the continents of Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania. Truly the missionary endeavors of the capuchin have been immense and their missionary zeal anything but extinguishable.