St Joseph Vaz’s Deed of Bondage to Mary marked in California

The Joseph Naik Vaz Institute in Berkeley, California, offered Mass which was celebrated by Fr Chrusantthus Bemeri (from Cameroon) at the Church of St Mary Magdalen, to celebrate the Signing of the Deed of Bondage to Mary by St Joseph Vaz in Sancoale-Goa on August 5, 1677.

We wanted to remind devotees of St Joseph Vaz of his tangible and very living devotion to Mary and how his missionary life under persecution was infused with his great Love and Devotion for our Mother Mary.

It should be of great interest to us Catholics of the Indian sub-continent, that the Church has taken the important step of bestowing the title of “Doctor of the Church” on French St Louis de Montfort for dedicating himself to the Blessed Virgin as her Servant in 1712.  

Catholics from the vast Indian sub-continent may well wonder if there’s any native Indian counterpart to this French Saint that lifted up the figure of Mary to our homegrown devotees of Mary in the India sub-continent.

Fortunately, from India’s smallest State, Goa and also from our sister-nation country of Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) we are inspired by our very own homegrown Marian Saint, namely St Joseph Vaz.  A year after his priestly Ordination in Goa in 1676, St Joseph Vaz signed his famous “Deed of Bondage” to Mary.

It should be noted that this was 35 years before St Louis de Montfort signed his personal Dedication to Mary in 1712. While St de Montfort had only a year left before he died in 1713 to spread this Marian Devotion, St Joseph Vaz wore the Rosary around his neck on his missionary journeys under persecution in our own Indian “Kanara”, the region around Mangalore, and then Sri Lanka. Thus, the Marian Mission of St Joseph Vaz lasted for not for one or two years, but for thirty-four years mostly under persecution and at the risk of his life.  

Due to his death a year after he wrote his pamphlet about Devotion to Mary, St Louis de Montfort’s efforts to spread Marian devotion were prematurely cut off. His pamphlet remained in obscurity until it was re-discovered in the nineteenth century. It was spread by the Third Order of the Dominicans.

But the inspiring ‘Signing of a Deed of Bondage to Mary’ by St Joseph Vaz was not destined to be cut off from future generations of Catholics in Ceylon. It was destined to grow from a humble mud chapel in the remote jungle of Ceyon to the famous miraculous Shrine of our Lady of Madhu, which he and his Indian missionaries built it into.

His fellow Indian missionary, Fr Pedro Ferrao, had been assigned to Madhu in the Vani forest when he came from Goa in 1696. It was soon reputed for many marvellous miracles and favours received from Mary. It became a place of spontaneous pilgrimage and healing or people of all races and religions, and a refuge for persecuted Catholics. St Joseph Vaz blessed and consecrated it in 1705.  

The Our Lady of Madhu Shrine continued on through the end of the Dutch persecution as an underground haven for persecuted Catholics and a place of miracles and pilgrimage. When the British drove out the Dutch, they gave religious freedom to the Catholics. Foreign missionaries such as the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Franciscans, and Jesuits started to replace the Indian Oratorians.

Noting the large number of miraculous healings at Madhu, the O.M.I. missionaries petitioned the Church to crown this Marian Shrine. It thus received formal recognition by the Church in 1924 as one of the great Marian Shrines of the Church.

Pope Francis visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu in 2015 after he canonised St Joseph Vaz in 2015. Here are his parting words from that significant Marian Shrine of the Church as the leader of Christendom to the large number of both Catholics and those of many faiths and races who have visited and still visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu in Sri Lanka:

“Dear brothers and sisters, I am happy to be with you in Mary’s house. Let us pray for one another. Above all, let us ask that this shrine may always be a house of prayer and a haven of peace. Through the intercession of Our Lady of Madhu, may all people find here inspiration and strength to build a future of reconciliation, justice and peace for all the children of this beloved land. Amen.”

[The writer is founder of the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute and details on their activities are available on www.josephnaikvaz.org]