From Joseph Naik Vaz Institute, Berkeley, California
October 1, 2025

Our warmest Congratulations on having St. Devasahayam made “Patron Saint of the Laity in India”
St. Devasayahayam Pillai was a brave and noble Martyr for giving his life for the faith.
He’s an inspiring model of courage under persecution. We salute him and pray for his Intercession.
We warmly congratulate his devotees on this great honor.

We are members of the Indian and Sri Lankan diaspora in the U.S., Canada and other countries, who have been working internationally for the Cause of St. Joseph Vaz since 1978. We are still working for the preservation of his spiritual legacy as the first native Indian missionary.
He was born in Goa, India (one part of South Asia) who worked for twenty-seven years under persecution to take the Mass and the Eucharist to Kanara, India, and to Sri Lanka (two other parts of South Asia) and trained the Laity to run his underground churches and institutions he founded.

We have had a Petition to Pope Francis, and now to Pope Leo, to have St. Joseph Vaz made Patron Saint of the Laity for his contributions to the Church under persecution, such as for training the Laity, Native Clergy and Native Religious Congregations, Inculturation, and Education and Priesthood of Tribal Peoples.

As we are in the diaspora we are effectively cut off from the Indian and Sri Lankan Bishops and from the large Lay associations which have backed the Petition for St. Devasahayam. We are also effectively cut off from our Bishops here overseas who take little interest in our native saints. We feel that due to these unfavorable circumstances, we can fairly take this opportunity of declaration of St. Devasahayam as “Patron Saint of the Laity in India” to ask for the support of the Bishops of India and of the Indian Laity to make St. Joseph Vaz also a Patron Saint of some of his contributions in India such as founding the first native Religious Congregation when no such institutions existed in the seventeenth century, and especially of the Laity whom he trained to run the churches he rescued. He was simply a visionary Saint of multiple apostolates, full of the spirit of compassion and service to humanity and the Church.

Poignantly, St. Joseph (Naik) Vaz, was born in Goa in 1651, a hundred and one years before this brave new Christian convert St. Devasahayam was martyred in 1752. He went in 1681 from his native Goa to Kanara (region around the important port of Mangalore, India) in 1681 – seventy-one years before St. Devsahaym was martyred – to minister to the Catholics abandoned by European missionaries when the Dutch banned all priests and missionaries of the European religious orders there. He had only his coolie clothes on his back and a cinnamon container where he hid his Mass vessels and church papers, risking immediate execution.
He was thus the first native Indian missionary, and one who risked his life under persecution for twenty-seven years to take the Mass and the Eucharist to those abandoned Indian Catholics and those of Sri Lanka. The Church in India owes an enormous debt to St. Joseph Vaz for having raised the Church of Kanara from the ashes and which as a result has given so many vocations to the Indian Church.
His formula for success was to train the Laity to collaborate with the missionaries and to run the Church successfully underground during persecution. He laid the foundation of a strong and active laity in Kanara. Then took what he learned from that experience running an underground Church there to Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, the Laity ran the underground network of underground chapels, churches, schools, and health clinics he founded for 140 years after his death, cut off from any European Catholic colonial power and from Rome.
While we warmly support that an Indian lay Martyr, St. Devasahayam be declared “Patron Saint of the Laity in India” we petition the Indian Bishops and Laity to ask His Holiness Pope Leo XIV that St. Joseph Vaz, Apostle of Sri Lanka and Kanara, be made “Patron Saint of the Laity as Synodal Church Collaborators and of Freedom of Religion in India.” This would not in any way interfere with any possible jurisdictional claim that the Sri Lankan Bishops may have over anything to do with St. Joseph Vaz.
“Patron Saint” would be an easy way to transmit to the People of India and to our People of God worldwide the awesome spiritual and saintly power he had to move Buddhist Kings and the Muslim physician of the King and people of all races and religions – and still has today – to move hearts and minds toward peace and reconciliation.

Filomena Saraswati Giese, President and Founder
Board members Olvin Veigas, S.J., George Pinto, Ligia Britto, Carol Fields
Joseph Naik Vaz Institute, California, US
www.josephnaikvaz.org