About the Basilica of Bom Jesus

The Basilica of Bom Jesus, in Old Goa, India, was built by the Jesuits between 1594 and 1605 in a Mannerist-Baroque style, its laterite stone facade left deliberately unplastered — the only church in Old Goa to display its bare red stone rather than a whitewashed surface — and decorated with Doric, Corinthian and Composite architectural orders across its three tiers. The basilica houses the remains of the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier (1506-1552), who died in December 1552 on the Chinese island of Shangchuan while awaiting passage to the mainland, and was buried there with quicklime intended to allow his bones to be transported later. Exhumed in February 1553, his body was found in a condition widely regarded at the time as remarkably preserved, giving rise to the tradition of his “incorruptibility” that became central to his veneration; the body was carried first to Malacca and then on to Goa, arriving on 16 March 1554 to large crowds including the Portuguese viceroy. Over the following centuries the body underwent documented deterioration, noted as early as 1681-1686, and today survives in largely skeletal condition; the right forearm was removed and sent to the Jesuit church of the Gesù in Rome in 1614, with further minor relics distributed to various Jesuit missions over time. Since 1622, the body has rested in an ornate silver casket decorated with scenes from the saint’s life, set upon a jasper and marble mausoleum donated by Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and crafted by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini, completed in 1698. Roughly every ten years — most recently between November 2024 and January 2025 — the body is publicly displayed in an Exposition of the Sacred Relics, drawing enormous crowds of pilgrims from across India and beyond.