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China, He tried to make informal arrangements but was unable to persuade anyone to smuggle him in. The other Portuguese ships left St John's so that when Francis fell ill of fever in November, his ship was the only Portuguese ship in the port. Francis died unattended by any of his brethren and without the last religious rites.
His corpse was reported to have been surrounded by lime in the coffin before it was buried in a grave on a beach on St John's Island. The lime was intended to accelerate the decomposition of the flesh so that the bones might be more conveniently returned to Malacca. However, when the Santa Cruz was ready to return in February 1553, the corpse was found to be intact so the whole coffin was returned to Malacca. The corpse was again buried in Malacca for five months but again was found not to have perished when it was exhumed and returned to Goa in 1554. Francis was canonised in 1622 with a feast day of 2 December. His body was transferred to the Basilica of Bom Jesus in 1624. It is now preserved intact, minus a right arm which was severed at the elbow and taken to Rome in 1614 and a toe, reportedly bitten off in ecstasy by a lady on viewing his corpse.
The 450th anniversary of the death of St Francis was commemorated by the Macau Ricci Institute who arranged a Symposium in Macau on 28th and 29th November. Some members of the RAS HK Branch attended this seminar which was followed by a visit to St John's Island.
Phillip Bruce, a Branch member, had visited St John's Island before he left for Spain. He wrote to us from Spain, and noted that he had visited the castle at Xavier, the birthplace of St Francis. "A spartan place, with, not surprisingly, a huge Jesuit college next to it. It is really interesting to have seen both the beginning and the end of the story."