GIOVANNI de BRITTO, saint. — Missionary and martyr of the Society of Jesus. Born in Lisbon to a noble family on 1 March 1647, as a boy he was page and companion to Prince Pietro di Braganza, the future King Pietro II.
He entered the novitiate in 1662 and was ordained a priest in 1673; that same year he embarked for the East Indies, where he was assigned to the mission of Madura.
He first worked in its northern part, in the kingdoms of Gingi and Tanjore, amid great dangers caused by civil wars and persecutions. Superior of the mission in 1685, the following year he went farther south, to the kingdom of Marava, but there he was arrested, tortured, and condemned to death; he owed his liberation to a palace revolution. At the end of that same year (1686), he was sent to Europe as procurator of the province of Malabar, but, prevented by the Portuguese court from going to Rome, he set sail from Lisbon once more for the East in 1690, despite King Pietro II’s desire to retain him as a member of the Council of the Indies and tutor to his son. In India, after making the canonical visitation of the mission of Madura, he resumed his work in Marava. But, because of one of the illegitimate wives dismissed by a converted royal prince, the Brahmins incited the King against the missionary. Arrested and brought before the court, G. de B. was beheaded at Oreyur on 4 February 1693. He was beatified on 17 February 1852 and canonized by Pius XII on 22 June 1947. Feast day, 4 February.