The Goan priest who helped save Catholicism in Sri Lanka

In January, as Sri Lanka continued to draw Indian pilgrims tracing the Ramayana trail, another group crossed the Palk Strait on a different spiritual journey. A delegation of 125 Goan Catholics arrived in Kandy to mark the 315th annual feast of St Joseph Vaz, popularly known as the “Apostle of Sri Lanka”.

For the pilgrims from Goa, the journey carried a special sense of connection. Vaz was born in 1651 in Benaulim, a village in south Goa. Yet it was across the Palk Strait, in what was then Ceylon, that he would leave his deepest mark. He spent 24 years on the island, leading a revival of Catholicism, which had been severely repressed after the Dutch seized Portuguese possessions on the island by 1658.

His life is still celebrated by Sri Lanka’s Catholic community, now estimated at around 1.6 million people. Much of what is known about the missionary comes from church records preserved on the island. The website of the Archdiocese of Colombo notes that Vaz showed a deep interest in prayer as a child and was nicknamed the “Little Saint” in his youth.

Ordained at 25, Vaz first moved to present-day Karnataka, where he built churches and schools. Various missionary groups were active across southern India at the time, ministering to small communities. While in Karnataka, he received news of the persecution of Catholics in Ceylon under Dutch rule.

Common enemy

The Dutch first arrived in Ceylon in the early 17th century, by which time the Portuguese had already been established on the island for nearly a hundred years.

When the Dutch attacked Portuguese strongholds, they were backed by the Kandyan kingdom. The Kandyan royalty, bitterly opposed to the common enemy, had long accused the Portuguese of using aggressive conversion methods, similar to those employed in Goa.

In 1638, the Kandyans and the Dutch signed the Westerwold Treaty, forming a formal alliance to drive out the Portuguese. One provision of the treaty, signed by King Rajasinha II and Admiral Adam Westerwold, called for a clampdown on Catholicism.

Article 17 of the treaty stated: “The King was not to tolerate any Roman Catholic priests, monks, or other ecclesiastics, but was to do his best to exterminate them, they being the cause of all commotion, dissensions and disturbances, wherever they were, who also set up the inhabitants of the country against the King.”

By 1658, the Portuguese were completely expelled from the island. As RG Anthonisz, the chief archivist in Colombo, wrote in his 1929 book The Dutch in Ceylon, the Dutch “eventually drove away the Portuguese from their fastnesses and settlements, and in their turn, held dominion over the sea-board provinces of the island for a hundred and fifty years”.

Once in control, the Dutch rulers moved to consolidate power. “Having possessed themselves of Negombo, Galle, Kalutara, Colombo, and Jaffna, and acquired dominion over some of their surrounding country, the Dutch next turned their attention to the establishment of a proper civil government, and to the administration of justice among the people who they found among their territory,” Anthonisz wrote. “These consisted mainly of low-country Sinhalese – so called to distinguish them from the King’s subjects in the hill country – who had been a century-and-half subject to the Portuguese...and had...intermarried with them and adopted Portuguese names and the Roman Catholic religion.”

The Dutch, looking to establish the Dutch Reformed Church, banned Catholic priests and rituals while appropriating their churches and converting them to Dutch churches. The Catholic community was forced to go underground and European missionaries barred from reaching the island. To mock Catholicism, the new rulers called it “Popery”.

“The Dutch might have been religious liberals in Holland, but not in Sri Lanka,” noted Sri Lankan anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere in an essay in the 2017 book Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History.

Miracle rain

As reports of persecution reached southern India, Vaz decided to secretly go to the island.

“In 1687, he courageously travelled to Sri Lanka, disguised as a labourer,” the Archdiocese of Colombo says on its website. “Upon his arrival in Jaffna, he secretly ministered to the faithful, reviving Catholic communities that had been deprived of priests for decades. His tireless work included administering sacraments, celebrating Mass in secret, and training local catechists to sustain the faith in challenging conditions.”

His activities soon drew the attention of the Dutch and the Kandyan aristocracy. In 1692, five years after his arrival in Ceylon, Vaz was arrested by the authorities in Kandy on suspicion of being a Portuguese spy. However, King Vimaladharmasuriya II, the son of Rajasinha II, was convinced that Vaz posed no danger and released him.

In 1696, Kandy was struck by severe drought and famine. “Many traditional rituals were performed but they failed to get rain,” historian Ramesha Jayaneththi wrote in a 2019 paper in Rajarata University’s Journal of Studies in Humanities. “Some Catholics in the royal court suggested to the king to request Fr. Vaz to pray to his god. He accepted it and according to the Catholic sources in the Biblioteca de Ajuda in Lisbon, a miracle happened. Then the king and lay Buddhist people admired Fr. Vaz as an ascetic person.”

Church accounts claim Vaz’s prayers led to “torrential rains”. After this “miracle”, he was permitted to continue his ministry in Kandy and later built a chapel in the city.

“Between 1698 and 1710, Fr. Vaz and his fellow Oratorian priests tirelessly built churches, schools, and social centers across the island, strengthening the Catholic faith,” the Archdiocese of Colombo says on its website. “He traveled extensively, ministering to Catholics in Colombo, Negombo, Mannar, Trincomalee, and beyond. His devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary led him to expand the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu, which remains a major pilgrimage site in Sri Lanka today.”

The Dutch continued to monitor him, but other priests from Goa joined his efforts, assisting him and helping translate Catholic texts into Sinhala and Tamil.

In a 1974 lecture, Edmund Peiris, Bishop Emeritus of Chilaw, said Vaz “revived the drooping spirits of the downtrodden Catholics”. He described Vaz and the priests who followed him as instrumental in preserving Catholicism in Sri Lanka, arguing that their efforts secured the Church a place in the country’s cultural life.

Flourishing community

Not all missionaries were viewed in the same light. Vaz’s disciple, the Goan priest Jacome Gonsalvez, was not as revered by the wider Sri Lankan public as he used his knowledge of idiomatic Tamil and Sinhalese to pursue a more “militant” form of missionary activity, according to Obeyesekere. Vaz, by contrast, came to be seen as a bridge-builder between Catholicism and Buddhism.

“During his missions, Fr. Vaz faced many hardships, including tropical diseases, harsh travel conditions, and continued suspicion from Dutch authorities,” the Archdiocese of Colombo says. “Yet, his unwavering faith and resilience allowed him to persevere. His missionary work extended to the far corners of the island, reaching villages and towns where Catholicism had nearly vanished.”

By the time of his death in Kandy in 1711, Vaz had helped establish 15 churches and 400 chapels in a country that had an estimated 70,000 practising Catholics.

King Vimaladharmasuriya II’s respect for Vaz, and his tolerance of Catholicism, also played a role in preserving the religion in Sri Lanka. “Father Vaz’s missionary outreach embraced a vast area, and there is little doubt that today’s Catholic population in the Kandyan kingdom and much of the low country owe considerably to the toleration of this apostolic work by the Kandyan kings,” Obeyesekere wrote.

Since Vaz’s time, Sri Lanka’s Catholic community has flourished, producing prominent figures such as filmmaker Lester James Peries, cricketer Chaminda Vaas and musician Sunil Perera of the band Gypsies. The community spans Sri Lanka’s linguistic divide, with Catholics in both the Sinhalese-majority south and the largely Tamil north.

After the British expelled the Dutch in 1796, Catholics were not directly targeted again until the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.

Vaz was beatified by Pope John Paul II during his 1995 visit to Sri Lanka. Twenty years later, he was canonised by Pope Francis. More than three centuries after his death, his legacy continues to link Goa and Sri Lanka.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His latest book, Colombo: Port of Call, has been published by Penguin Random House.