A rota missionária do Ocidente: O início da actividade dos Jesuítas no Brasil

Abstract

In the same year as the one of the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in Japan, Fr. Manuel da Nóbrega was sent to Brazil together with the first group of Jesuit missionaries. As Xavier, they had to face a new world, virtually unknown to them, and they had to imagine new missionary methods adapted to the people they were to meet. In the face of peoples so different among themselves, both in the East as well as in the West, the missionaries were confronted with the need for great creativeness in order to mediate the Gospel to the different cultures. According to the article, to look at the activity of the Society of Jesus in Brazil is tantamount to deal with questions like the ones pertaining to the conversion of the Indians, to the social and political conditions for evangelization and to the need for new missionary methods.