Basilica of Bom Jesus
Baroque basilica of black granite and laterite, holding the incorrupt body of a Jesuit missionary in a silver casket.
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About this audio guide
The Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa opens on a crowd waiting before dawn on 16 March 1554 to see a corpse that had not decayed after more than a year, and a Portuguese noblewoman who leaned in and bit off one of its toes. That body belonged to Francis Xavier, the Basque missionary who died off the China coast in 1552, and the guide traces how Portuguese Goa reacted to his eerily preserved remains, the church built to house him from 1594, and the silver casket sealed around him in 1637. You'll hear about archbishop Aleixo de Menezes and the Jesuit priest who funded the casket's engraved plates. It's a story about a relic fought over for centuries, told steps from where the fighting happened.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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