FRANCESCO BRANGATI. — Missionary in China, b. in Palermo in 1607, received into the Society of Jesus in 1623. Arriving in China in 1637, he carried out almost all his activity in Kiang-nan, in Shanghai and nearby cities. He gave the Church a magnificent development, with an average of more than a thousand baptisms per year. A characteristic of his work was the organization of Congregations for the various classes of the faithful. In 1665, all the missionaries were summoned to Peking and from there exiled to Canton. B. died in that city on 26 Apr. 1671, shortly after the sentence that granted freedom to the Fathers.
He wrote various catechetical works in Chinese, almost all of which were still being reprinted in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as
BRANCATI FRANCESCO — BRANDES GEORG
as well as his Chinese translation of Bellarmine’s *Ascensio ad Deum per scalam creaturarum*. It was published posthumously in Europe: *De Sinensium ritibus politicis acta, seu r. p. Francisci B. S. I. apud Sinas per annos 34 missionarii responsio apologetica ad r. p. Dominicum Navarrete P.*, (2 vols., Paris 1700).