Recognizing that Matteo Ricci “lived the Christian virtues to a heroic degree,” Pope Francis has officially put the famous 16th-century Italian Jesuit missionary to China on the path to sainthood, The America Magazine reported yesterday.
Last weekend, the Vatican announced that the pope has authorized Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints, to promulgate a decree recognizing “the heroic virtues of the Servant of God, Matteo Ricci, a professed priest of the Society of Jesus, [who was] born at Macerata, Italy, on Oct. 6, 1552, and died in Peking [now Beijing], China, on May 11, 1610.”
Father Ricci began his missionary work in China in 1582 when he arrived in Macau, then a territory under Portuguese rule.
Once in Macau, Ricci studied the Chinese language and customs. It was the beginning of a long project that made him one of the first Western scholars to master Chinese script and Classical Chinese. With Michele Ruggieri, he traveled to Guangdong’s major cities, Canton and Zhaoqing (then the residence of the Viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi), seeking to establish a permanent Jesuit mission outside Macau.
It is thought that, during their time in Zhaoqing, Ricci and Ruggieri compiled a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary, the first in any European language, for which they developed a system for transcribing Chinese words in the Latin alphabet. The manuscript was misplaced in the Jesuit Archives in Rome, rediscovered only in 1934, and published only in 2001.
Father Ricci made history in 1601 by becoming the first European to enter China’s Forbidden City in Beijing; the Wanli Emperor of China’s Ming dynasty had invited him because of his knowledge of astronomy and calendrical science. Known as “Li Madou” to the Chinese, Father Ricci produced scholarly works in optics, astronomy, music, geography, geometry and numerous other fields.
Pope Francis is known to be inspired by Father Ricci, and the Holy See decree came on the pope’s 86th birthday (Dec. 17). The Vatican’s announcement is also an important one for the Catholic Church in China and its 12 million members. MDT
