Word: xavier
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Catholicism was first brought to Japan in 1549 by the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier. It swiftly took root in a few places among the Buddhist Japanese. By 1600 there were nearly 300,000 converts. But the church's fortunes soon ebbed. Four thousand of the new Christians were martyred in Nagasaki and elsewhere. Some were decapitated, some executed in scalding-hot springs by shoguns and local lords. The ruthless persecution continued over the centuries. Officials forced suspected believers to tread on Christian images. In some places an annual oath renouncing Christianity was obligatory. One reminder of the past...
...parentless and begging to be taken home. They do not come from stork, or test tube, but from a former medical clinic in Cleveland, Ga., called Babyland General. They are dolls. Each fabric-and-polyester infant is a "soft sculpture," handmade by one of 125 employees of Entrepreneur Xavier Roberts, 24, a former artist. In just two years, Babyland has "delivered" 50,000 babies at prices of $125 to $200 each, which Roberts insists on calling adoption fees. "You don't buy them, you adopt them," said one middle-aged Miami woman, pressing a fat baby boy doll...
...three saints: Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, Mother Elizabeth Seton and Bishop John Neumann, who was canonized...