The Portuguese Nobleman Who Became India's John the Baptist
Feast Day: February 4
Born: March 1, 1647, Lisbon, Portugal
Martyred: February 4, 1693, Oriyur, Tamil Nadu, India (aged 46)
Beatified: August 21, 1853, by Pope Blessed Pius IX
Canonized: June 22, 1947, by Pope Venerable Pius XII
Also Known As: Arul Anandar (அருளானந்தர்) — "Blessed Joy" in Tamil
Religious Order: Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
Patronage: Portugal; Diocese of Sivagangai, India; Madurai Archdiocese
Relics: Oriyur (Red Sand Shrine), Tamil Nadu, India
There are missionaries who carry the Gospel to foreign lands while clinging tightly to everything they brought from home — their language, their customs, their European dress, their European ways. And then there are missionaries who do something far more difficult and far more radical: they strip away everything except Christ Himself, and they become the people they came to serve.
Saint John de Britto was the second kind.
John de Brito (João de Brito, 1647-1693) was one of the earliest Jesuit missionaries in India to adopt elements of the local culture in his evangelization. He dressed in the yellow robes of an Indian ascetic. He ate only rice, legumes, fruits, and herbs — no meat, no fish, no eggs, no wine — for nearly twenty years. He learned Tamil. He walked barefoot across the scorching plains of southern India. He renamed himself Arul Anandar — "Blessed Joy" — and lived as a pandaraswami, a wandering holy man, so that he could reach every caste, from the Brahmins to the outcasts.
He can be called the John the Baptist of India. Like John the Baptist, he lived in the wilderness, preached repentance, and prepared the way for Christ in a land that had never known Him. And like John the Baptist, he was beheaded for telling a powerful man the truth about marriage.
Early Life: The Page Who Wore a Jesuit Cassock
Born on March 1, 1647, in Lisbon, Portugal, John de Britto came from an aristocratic family. His father, Salvador de Britto Pereira, was the Viceroy of Brazil but died in office. John de Britto, born 1 March 1647 in Lisbon, Portugal, was the scion of a powerful aristocratic Portuguese family.
John's family was not merely wealthy — they were connected to the highest levels of Portuguese power. Don Pedro II of Portugal, when a child, had among his little pages a modest boy of rich and princely parents. The young John de Britto — for that was his name — had much to bear from his careless-living companions, to whom his holy life was a reproach.
At the age of nine, John was sent to the royal court as a page — a companion to the young prince who would one day become King Pedro II. It was a position of immense privilege. John would grow up alongside royalty. He would be educated with the finest tutors Portugal had to offer. He would have access to wealth, power, and every comfort imaginable.
But John was different from the other boys at court. His piety stood out. His seriousness. His refusal to join in the careless, dissolute living that characterized so much of court life. The other pages mocked him. His holiness was a reproach to them — a mirror they did not want to look into.
And then, when John was eleven years old, everything changed.
The Illness and the Vow: A Year in a Jesuit Cassock
At the age of eleven, Britto fell gravely ill. His mother prayed to St. Francis Xavier for his recovery, promising to dress him in a Jesuit cassock for a year if he survived. A severe illness made him turn for aid to Saint Francis Xavier, a Saint well loved by the Portuguese; and when he recovered, in answer to his prayers, his mother clothed him for a year in the tunic worn in those days by the Jesuit Fathers.
Picture what this must have looked like: a young aristocrat, a page in the royal court, walking the halls of the palace dressed not in silk and velvet, but in the simple black cassock of a Jesuit priest. It was a living sermon. A walking reminder that there was something more important than power, more important than prestige — something eternal.
He regained his health and walked around court like a miniature Jesuit, but there was nothing small about his heart or the desire that grew to actually become a Jesuit.
From that time John's heart burned to follow the example of the Apostle of India. Francis Xavier — the great Jesuit missionary who had died trying to reach China, who had baptized tens of thousands in India and Japan, who had walked barefoot across Asia carrying nothing but a crucifix and a burning love for Christ — became John's hero. And John made a decision: he would follow Xavier's path. He would become a Jesuit. And he would go to India.
Entering the Society of Jesus: Against All Opposition
Despite pressure from the prince and the king, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Lisbon Dec. 17, 1662 when he was only 15 years-old.
Fifteen years old. The son of one of the most powerful families in Portugal. A close friend of the future king. And he walked away from all of it — the court, the wealth, the career, the future that had been laid out for him — and entered the Jesuit novitiate.
Blessed John's mother, when she had learned that her son was going to India, used all her influence to prevent him from leaving his own country. His family was horrified. The court was horrified. They tried everything they could to stop him. But John would not be moved.
The future martyr declared firmly: "God, who called me from the world into religious life, now calls me from Portugal to India. Not to respond to my vocation as I ought, would be to provoke the justice of God. As long as I live, I shall never cease to desire passage to India."
He studied classics, with an interruption because of health problems, then philosophy. He travelled to the missions of Madurai, in Southern India, present-day Tamil Nadu, in 1673. He was ordained in February 1673 and left Lisbon for Goa in mid-March, arriving the following September.
Eleven years after entering the Jesuits, John de Britto finally got his wish. At the age of twenty-six, he stepped onto a ship bound for India — and he would never see Portugal again.
Arrival in India: Thirty Days in the Desert
In September, 1673, he reached Goa. Before taking up his work he spent thirty days in the Exercises of St. Ignatius at Ambalacate near Cranganore.
The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius — the thirty-day silent retreat that forms the heart of Jesuit spirituality. John spent a full month in prayer, in silence, in the presence of God, preparing his soul for the work ahead. It was the last moment of European comfort he would know.
He studied more theology in Goa and was asked to remain as a teacher but he desired to be a missionary and to seek the glory of martyrdom.
"To seek the glory of martyrdom." John did not come to India to be comfortable. He did not come to be safe. He came to give his life — and he knew it from the beginning.
The Madurai Mission: Becoming Indian
De Britto apparently entered the Kshatriyas, a noble caste. His dress was yellow cotton; he abstained from every kind of animal food and from wine.
The Madurai Mission was a bold attempt to establish an Indian Catholic Church that was relatively free of European cultural domination. As such, Britto learned the native languages, went about dressed in yellow cotton, and lived like a Tamil Thuravi/Sanyaasi, abstaining from every kind of animal food and from wine.
This was revolutionary. Most European missionaries in India lived in Portuguese enclaves, wore European clothes, ate European food, and expected converts to become culturally European in order to become Christian. John de Britto rejected all of that.
When he studied the India caste system, he discovered that most Christians belonged to the lowest and most despised caste. He thought that members of the higher caste would also have to be converted for Christianity to have a future. He became an Indian ascetic, a pandaraswami since they were permitted to approach individuals of all castes.
A pandaraswami — a wandering holy man, dressed in saffron, living on alms, sleeping on the ground, walking barefoot through villages and forests. It was a recognized role in Hindu society. And it gave John access to everyone — from the Brahmins, the highest caste, to the Dalits, the "untouchables."
He changed his life style, eating just a bit of rice each day and sleeping on a mat, dressing in a red cloak and turban. Britto remained a strict vegan until the end of his life, rejecting meat, fish, eggs and alcohol, and living only on legumes, fruits and herbs.
For nearly twenty years, John de Britto lived this way. Not as a performance. Not as a missionary tactic. But as a total embrace of the people he had come to serve.
He renamed himself Arul Anandar (அருளானந்தர்) in Tamil. "Blessed Joy." It was his Indian name. His true name, in the language of the people he loved.
The Fruit of His Labor: Ten Thousand Conversions
He labored in the Jesuit province of Madura, which included seven missions, preaching, converting, and baptizing multitudes, at the cost of privations, hardships, and persecutions.
His efforts led to an estimated 10,000 conversions.
Ten thousand people. Baptized. Brought into the Church. Not through force, not through bribery, but through the witness of a man who had become one of them — who spoke their language, who dressed as they dressed, who ate what they ate, who slept where they slept, and who loved them enough to give up everything he had ever known.
He was made superior in Madura after 11 years on the mission. The other Jesuits recognized his gifts. They made him the superior of the entire Madurai province — responsible for overseeing all the missions in southern India.
But his success attracted enemies.
First Imprisonment: 1684
The ruler of the Maravar country imprisoned him in 1684. He and some catechists were captured by soldiers in 1686 and bound in heavy chains. When the soldiers threatened to kill the Jesuit, he simply offered his neck, but they did not act. After spending a month in prison, the Jesuit captive was released.
The royalty of Madura saw John as a threat to the caste system. They imprisoned and tortured him but then released him.
John had done what most Europeans thought was impossible: he had converted members of the higher castes. And the local rulers — who depended on the caste system to maintain their power — saw him as a direct threat to the social order. They arrested him. They tortured him. And when the soldiers raised their swords to kill him, John calmly offered his neck.
But they did not strike. Not yet. They released him instead — perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of a lingering respect for the holy man who had lived among them with such integrity.
Recalled to Portugal: The King's Offer
In 1688 he was sent to Europe as deputy to the triennial Congregation of Procurators. The Jesuits recalled him to Portugal in 1687 and worked as a missions procurator.
After fourteen years in India, John was called back to Portugal — to report on the mission, to recruit new missionaries, and to rest. When he reached Lisbon ten months later, he was received like a hero. He toured the universities and colleges describing the adventurous life of an Indian missionary.
He was thin. He was worn. His face was weathered from years in the Indian sun. But his eyes burned with the same fire that had driven him to leave Portugal at age fifteen.
His boyhood friend and now-king, Peter II noticed how thin, worn and tired his friend looked; he asked him to remain at home to tutor his two sons, but de Brito placed the needs in India above the comfort of the Portuguese court.
The king — the boy John had grown up with, the boy he had served as a page — offered him everything. A position as tutor to the royal princes. An archbishopric. Comfort. Safety. A life of honor in Portugal.
Resisting urgent attempts to keep him in Portugal, and refusing the Archbishopric of Cranganore, he returned in 1691 to the borders of Madura and Marava.
John said no. He wanted only one thing: to go back to India.
The Return: 1690
He finally went back to the land of his choice in 1690, with twenty-five Jesuits but several died during the voyage.
Twenty-five young Jesuits sailed with him. Several died at sea — from disease, from shipwreck, from the brutal conditions of seventeenth-century ocean travel. But John and the survivors pressed on.
The king of Portugal took every means to obtain his return to Portugal, if not as tutor to his son, which post he had declined, then as bishop of one of the Portuguese sees, but the Saint was occupied in baptizing thousands of catechumens and instructing the pagans whom grace had touched.
John went straight back to the villages. Back to the forests. Back to the people he loved. And he resumed the work — preaching, baptizing, teaching, living as Arul Anandar, the wandering holy man who carried Christ in his heart.
The Conversion That Sealed His Fate
Having converted Teriadeven, a Maravese prince, he required him to dismiss all his wives but one.
John de Britto's preaching led to the conversion of Thadiyathevan (தடியத் தேவன்), a Marava prince who had several wives. When Thadiyathevan was required to dismiss all his wives but one, a serious problem arose.
This was the moment everything turned. John had converted a powerful local prince — a member of the Marava warrior caste, a man with political influence and military strength. It was exactly the kind of high-caste conversion John had been working toward for twenty years.
But there was a problem. The prince had multiple wives. And John — faithful to the Church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage — told him he could keep only one.
Among them was a niece of the king, who took up her quarrel and began a general persecution.
One of the wives the prince dismissed was the niece of the local king. She was humiliated. Enraged. And she went to her uncle and demanded revenge.
The Brahmans were alarmed once more and conjured his death; he was tracked everywhere, but the envoys could not take him for some time.
The hunt was on. Soldiers searched for John across the countryside. He hid. He moved from village to village. But he did not stop preaching. He did not stop baptizing. He did not run.
Arrest and Trial
De Britto and others were taken and carried to the capital, Ramnad, the Brahmins clamouring for his death.
They caught him. They dragged him to Ramnad — the capital of the Maravar kingdom — and put him on trial. The Brahmins, who had opposed him for years, demanded his execution.
Thence he was led to Oreiour, some thirty miles northward along the coast.
Oriyur. A small coastal village. The place chosen for his execution.
Martyrdom: February 4, 1693
On February 4, 1693, John de Britto was arrested again and executed by beheading in Oriyur, Tamil Nadu, after refusing to abandon his mission.
His execution by decapitation was carried out in the sight of a multitude of Christians who knew of his coming martyrdom, and who saw him pray in an apparent ecstasy, which checked the executioner's courage for a time.
The Christians came. Hundreds of them. The people John had baptized, the people he had taught, the people who loved him. They stood at a distance and watched as the soldiers bound their Arul Anandar and prepared to kill him.
John knelt. He prayed. And according to the witnesses, he entered into an ecstasy — so deep, so visibly united to God, that even the executioner hesitated. The man raised his sword. And he could not bring himself to strike.
But the order was given again. And this time, the executioner obeyed.
His head was struck off, 11 February, 1693. (Note: sources differ slightly on the date — either February 4 or February 11, 1693; the Church celebrates his feast on February 4.)
John de Britto — the Portuguese nobleman, the page of the king, the Jesuit missionary who had become an Indian ascetic — died as he had lived. On his knees. In prayer. Faithful to the end.
The Red Sand: A Miracle That Endures
This seashore sightseeing location is one of the most venerable pilgrim centres of Christians in the world over, as it is said to be the site of Britto's martyrdom. It was at this place where Britto is said to have been beheaded in 1693. The sand dune here is believed to have been stained by his blood.
Tradition holds that the soil at his execution site turned red, symbolizing his martyrdom.
The place where John died is called the Red Sand Shrine — because the sand there, even today, is red. The faithful believe it was stained by the blood of the martyr — and that it has never returned to its natural color.
The red sand dune here in this shrine where the blood of Britto was spilled has great significance. Numerous incurable diseases are said to have cured by the application of the red sand on the respective body parts. Couples are believed to have blessed with children on visiting the shrine and praying to the departed soul.
The red sand dune stored in this shrine where the blood of Britto was spilled has great significance. Numerous incurable diseases are said to have been cured by the application of the red sand on the respective body parts.
Pilgrims come from all over India — Catholics, Hindus, Muslims — to pray at the shrine, to take the red sand, to ask for healing. The shrine has been recognized by the Tamil Nadu government as a sacred tourist site.
Beatification and Canonization
Britto was beatified by Pope Pius IX on 21 August 1853.
He was canonised by Pope Pius XII on 22 June 1947.
Three hundred years after his death, the Church formally recognized what the people of Tamil Nadu had known all along: Arul Anandar was a saint.
Saint John de Britto's feast day is 4 February.
Legacy: Schools, Churches, and the Words of a Pope
Several schools and colleges, such as St. Britto High School in Goa, St. John De Britto Anglo-Indian High School in Kochi, and Arul Anandar College in Madurai, are named after him.
In Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a Jesuit school for boys is named after him, SMA Kolese De Britto (De Britto College Senior High School). In Penang, Malaysia, there is a church called Church of St John Britto.
His name lives on across Asia — in schools, in churches, in the hearts of the people he served.
And in 1986, when Pope Saint John Paul II visited India, he went to the Cathedral of Saint Thomas in Madras (now Chennai), and he said this:
"Christ – Shepherd, Prophet and Priest – has sealed our hearts with his call just as he touched the hearts of the apostles, the hearts of Saint Thomas, Saint Francis Xavier and Saint John de Britto."
Three names. Three missionaries to India. Thomas the Apostle. Francis Xavier. And John de Britto — the Portuguese nobleman who became an Indian ascetic, who ate only rice and slept on the ground, who walked barefoot across Tamil Nadu for twenty years, and who died with a sword through his neck because he told a prince the truth about marriage.
What Saint John de Britto Teaches Us
Saint John de Britto teaches us that evangelization is not about imposing our culture on others. It is about stripping away everything except Christ — and then letting Christ speak in the language, the dress, the customs of the people we serve.
He did not demand that Indians become Portuguese. He became Indian — as much as any European could. He learned their language. He ate their food. He dressed as they dressed. And in doing so, he showed them that the Gospel was not a foreign religion, but the universal truth that could take root in any soil.
And he teaches us about the cost of discipleship. John walked away from wealth, power, and royalty at age fifteen. He walked away from an archbishopric and the tutorship of princes at age forty. He chose poverty, hardship, persecution, and finally martyrdom — because he believed that nothing on earth was more important than bringing Christ to the people who had never known Him.
He was right.
A Prayer for the Intercession of Saint John de Britto
Lord Jesus, through the intercession of Saint John de Britto, teach us to carry the Gospel not with arrogance, but with humility — not by demanding that others become like us, but by becoming like them. When we are tempted to cling to comfort, to power, or to the approval of the world, remind us of this nobleman who gave it all away to walk barefoot through the villages of India. May we, like him, strip away everything except You — and may we, like him, be willing to die rather than deny the truth You have given us. Amen.
Saint John de Britto — Arul Anandar — pray for us.
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