12. The Toe of St Francis Xavier was bitten off by a mourner, and smuggled from Goa to Portugal.
‘Behold I send you as lambs among wolves’ (Luke 10:3), thundered Christ to his disciples when sending them out to convert the masses. Well, he may have been speaking to his disciples, but in the 16th century he was heard by Frances Xavier (1506-52). A Jesuit, in 1541 Xavier spent 13 months fighting off sea sickness on a boat bound for Goa, India. He converted the Goans, then made his way across Asia, converting communities and leaving churches in his wake. In Japan, he made an abandoned Buddhist monastery his headquarters, and converted 2, 000 people to Christianity.
Xavier died of exhaustion on an island off China in 1552. His body was put on display in Goa, where thousands travelled to pay their respects and mourn this energetic evangelist. One devoted woman took things a little too far, however. Bending as if to kiss his foot, she promptly bit off one of his toes, and took it back to Portugal with her. She displayed it in her own chapel, where it drew in the big tourist bucks, and still attracts crowds of devotees to this day. Slightly less-impressively, a village in Goa has of one of Xavier’s fingernails.