Despite being history’s first
Jesuit pope, Pope Francis has elevated only a couple of new Jesuit
saints.
A region of Italy, however, is now clamouring for the Jesuit
pope to add another member of his order to the list, reports Crux.
Born in 1576, Adami was part of an upper-class family and his uncle wanted him to become a nobleman through military service. Instead, at the age of 16 he declared his desire to enter the Society of Jesus.
Like his fellow Jesuits of the same era, St Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci, Adami was sent to serve in Asia. He left for Macau in 1602, spent time in India doing theological studies, and reached Japan in 1604.
After Japan’s imperial government declared a series of anti-Christian edicts in 1612, Adami was exiled to Macau. He returned to Japan in 1618 and moved around seeking refuge from anti-Christian persecution, eventually arriving in Nagasaki in 1630 through what is today Tokyo.
Today, the Jesuit archives in Rome preserve correspondence he sent back to headquarters between 1615 and 1624.
Like many other Christians in imperial Japan - they were known then as “Kirishitan” - Adami eventually was captured and sentenced to a form of torture known as “tsurushi,” or “reverse hanging.”
In essence, the condemned person would be dangled by their feet with a rope, placed halfway into a ditch with dirt at the bottom. Typically the forehead would be sliced with a blade in order to induce bleeding, thereby lowering blood pressure in the area around the head, and making the experience even more painful.