On April 26, 2026, Indian police arrested Gautam Khattar, a Hindu YouTuber and founder of the Sanatan Mahasangh, in Himachal Pradesh after he publicly called St. Francis Xavier—patron saint of Goa, co-founder of the Society of Jesus, and one of the greatest missionaries in the history of the Church—a “terrorist” at a public event organized by the Sanatan Dharma Raksha Samiti on April 18. The Catholic Church of Goa issued a statement on April 20 condemning the remarks, and protests erupted across the state. The cited article reports these facts from the EWTN News portal (April 29, 2026). Yet beneath the surface of this seemingly straightforward account of religious tension lies a profound theological failure: the Church’s response, while adequate in its condemnation of the insult, reveals the characteristic weakness of post-conciliar Catholicism, which seeks “peace” and “communal harmony” without demanding the public acknowledgment of Christ the King’s rights over all nations and all peoples.
The Insult Against a Saint: A Symptom of the World’s Hatred for Christ
Let us begin with the most fundamental truth that the cited article merely implies but never explicitly states: an attack upon a saint of God is an attack upon God Himself. St. Francis Xavier (1506–1552), born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta in the Kingdom of Navarre, was not merely a “missionary” in the diluted, post-conciliar sense of one who engages in interreligious dialogue and social work. He was an alter Christus, an instrument of the Holy Ghost, who baptized tens of thousands of souls in Goa, along the Fishery Coast of southern India, in Malacca, in Japan, and in the islands of the East Indies. His body, found incorrupt after death, has been preserved in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa and is exposed to public veneration every ten years, drawing millions of pilgrims from every continent.
The insult hurled by Gautam Khattar—calling this apostle a “terrorist”—is not merely an offense against the “religious sentiments” of Goan Catholics, as the Church’s statement frames it. It is blasphemy. It is the world’s hatred of Christ manifested through hatred of His servant. Our Lord Himself declared: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you… If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:18–20). The world does not hate St. Francis Xavier because of some historical grievance over Portuguese colonialism—a grievance the article mentions only obliquely through the reference to Hindu fringe elements claiming “Hindus were never persecuted under the Portuguese.” The world hates St. Francis Xavier because he was a Catholic priest who claimed, with the full authority of the Church, that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), and who acted upon that truth by laboring to bring souls to baptism and to the Catholic faith.
The term “terrorist” applied to St. Francis Xavier is not merely false; it is diabolical. It inverts the order of truth. The true terrorist is he who, like Khattar, seeks to turn souls away from the true Faith, to sow discord among those who live in peace, and to insult the memory of one whom the Church has raised to the honor of the altars. The true terrorist is every enemy of the Church who labors to destroy the faith of the faithful and to prevent the conversion of infidels. St. Francis Xavier was the opposite of a terrorist: he was a conqueror of souls for Christ, a soldier of the Cross who traversed oceans and endured unimaginable sufferings to bring the light of the Gospel to those who sat in darkness.
The Church’s Response: Adequate in Condemnation, Deficient in Doctrine
The statement issued by the Catholic Church of Goa on April 20, as quoted in the cited article, deserves careful analysis. It reads in part:
We unequivocally reject and condemn these pernicious statements… [expressing] deep pain and anguish over the hateful and malicious remarks made recently at a public function in Vasco city against St. Francis Xavier, … affectionately known as the Gõycho Saib, a saint loved and revered not only in Goa but by millions of people across the globe.
The condemnation is clear, and it is correct. The Church must always condemn attacks upon her saints. But observe the language: “pernicious statements,” “hateful and malicious remarks,” “deep pain and anguish.” This is the language of sentiment, not of doctrine. The statement continues:
Such divisive rhetoric, laced with falsehoods and venom, deeply hurts the sentiments of lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of Goans — irrespective of the religion they profess — who hold St. Francis Xavier in the highest esteem. These statements have caused serious hurt to the religious sentiments of Catholics and risk disturbing the communal harmony we have long cherished.
Here we see the characteristic weakness of post-conciliar ecclesiology. The Church’s statement frames the issue primarily in terms of “hurt sentiments” and “communal harmony”—categories drawn not from Catholic theology but from the liberal, secular order that the Church was supposed to transform, not accommodate. The statement does not once affirm that St. Francis Xavier is a saint of the Catholic Church, that his mission was divinely ordained, that the Catholic faith is the one true religion, or that all men are bound to seek and embrace it. The statement does not invoke the teaching of Pius XI in Quas Primas that Christ the King has authority over all nations and that rulers and peoples are bound to publicly acknowledge His reign. The statement does not even quote the words of Our Lord: “He who is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30).
Instead, the Church’s statement appeals to “communal harmony”—a phrase that, in the mouth of a Catholic bishop or priest, should set off alarm bells. Communal harmony is not a Catholic principle. It is a principle of the secular state, which demands that all religions be treated as equally valid and that no religion claim superiority. The Catholic Church, when she speaks truly, cannot appeal to “communal harmony” as her highest value, because the Catholic Church knows that peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ (Pius XI, encyclical Quas Primas, 1925). True peace requires the submission of all men and all nations to the kingship of Jesus Christ. To seek “harmony” without truth is to build on sand.
The statement further appeals:
Let us uphold the peace and unity that have defined us for so long… [and calls for] the saint’s spirit of love and fraternity [to] continue to guide us all towards ever greater unity and peace in these troubled times.
“Spirit of love and fraternity”—these are the watchwords of the post-conciliar revolution, the language of Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae, the language of the Church that has abandoned her mission to convert all nations and instead seeks “dialogue” with false religions. St. Francis Xavier did not preach “fraternity” with Hindus. He preached Christ crucified, and he baptized those who believed. He did not seek “unity” with those who worshipped idols; he sought their conversion, their salvation, their incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ. To invoke St. Francis Xavier’s “spirit of love and fraternity” as if it were compatible with the modern, ecumenical understanding of these terms is to betray his memory.
The Silence About Portugal, Colonialism, and the True History of Evangelization
The cited article notes, almost in passing, that:
The people of Goa stand united and it was manifest in the protests with people all faiths joining the protests. Hindus were never persecuted under the Portuguese as these fringe groups claim.
This statement by Cyril Fernandes, president of the Catholic Association of Goa, is historically problematic and theologically revealing. It is true that the Portuguese colonial regime in Goa, like all colonial regimes, was a complex historical reality. It is also true that the Portuguese authorities in Goa did engage in policies that, by the standards of the Gospel, were unjust—including, at various points, pressures on non-Christians that went beyond what the Church’s own teaching on religious liberty (as articulated before the conciliar revolution) would permit. The Church has always taught that faith cannot be coerced, that the act of faith must be free, and that no one should be compelled to embrace the Catholic religion against his will (cf. the teaching of Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, which condemned the proposition that “the Church has not the power of using force” only in the sense that she has no temporal power, not that she denies the duty of the Catholic state to protect the faith).
But the deeper issue is this: the cited article, and the Church’s response, entirely omit the supernatural dimension of St. Francis Xavier’s mission. The article reduces the conflict to a matter of “hate speech” and “communal harmony.” It does not mention that St. Francis Xavier was sent by the Pope, that he acted under the authority of the Church, that his mission was part of the Great Commission given by Our Lord to the Apostles: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). It does not mention that the Portuguese crown, for all its sins, also bore the responsibility of patronage (padroado) over the missions, and that this arrangement, while imperfect, was the historical means by which the Gospel was brought to India, Southeast Asia, and Japan.
The article does not mention that St. Francis Xavier’s mission was not merely “humanitarian” or “social” but supernatural: he sought the salvation of souls, the destruction of idolatry, the establishment of the Church. He did not go to India to promote “communal harmony”; he went to India to convert souls to Christ. To omit this is to reduce the faith to a private sentiment, a “religious preference” that must be respected in the public square but never proclaimed as the truth.
The Arrest of Khattar: Justice or Cowardice?
The cited article reports that Khattar was arrested under criminal sections for “derogatory remarks” and “hurting religious sentiments.” He was later hospitalized after complaining of “uneasiness and hypertension.” The Church’s statement had called for “immediate, strong, and exemplary action against those responsible for this hate speech, in accordance with the laws of the land.”
Here we must ask: is the Church’s appeal to the secular state to punish blasphemy a sign of strength or of weakness? On the one hand, it is true that the Catholic Church has always taught that the civil authority has a duty to protect the faith of the people and to restrain public blasphemy and attacks upon religion. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (prop. 55). Pope Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei, taught that the state must recognize the Catholic religion as the religion of the state and must protect it against attacks.
On the other hand, the Church’s appeal to the Indian state—a secular, pluralistic state that does not recognize the kingship of Christ—is an admission of defeat. The Church in India, like the Church everywhere in the post-conciliar era, has abandoned her claim to public authority and has reduced herself to one “religious community” among many, seeking protection from the very state that, by its secular constitution, denies the truth she exists to proclaim. The true Church of Christ does not beg for protection from the secular order; she demands that the secular order submit to Christ the King.
Moreover, the arrest of Khattar, while it may satisfy the immediate desire for justice, does nothing to address the deeper problem: the ignorance of the truth about St. Francis Xavier and the Catholic faith. The Catholic response to blasphemy is not merely to punish the blasphemer but to proclaim the truth with greater clarity and courage. The Church in Goa should have used this occasion to preach publicly about the life, mission, and holiness of St. Francis Xavier, to explain why he is a saint, to proclaim the truth of the Catholic faith, and to call all Goans—Hindu, Muslim, and Christian alike—to conversion. Instead, she issued a statement about “hurt sentiments” and called for “restraint.”
The Post-Conciliar Church: A Church That Cannot Defend Its Saints
The cited article, and the events it describes, are symptomatic of a much larger disease: the inability of the post-conciliar Church to defend the faith in the public square. This inability is not accidental; it is the direct result of the theological revolution inaugurated by John XXIII and consummated at Vatican II. The Church that emerged from Vatican II is a Church that has abandoned her claim to be the one true religion, that has embraced “religious freedom” as a human right, that seeks “dialogue” with false religions instead of their conversion, and that speaks the language of “peace,” “fraternity,” and “communal harmony” instead of the language of truth, conversion, and the kingship of Christ.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught:
His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.
This is the doctrine that the Church in Goa, and the Church everywhere, has abandoned. If Christ the King reigns over all nations, then the Hindu activists who insult St. Francis Xavier are not merely “hurting the sentiments” of Catholics; they are rebelling against the authority of Christ. The proper response is not an appeal to “communal harmony” but a proclamation of the truth: Christ is King, His Church is the one true Church, St. Francis Xavier is a saint of God, and all men are bound to submit to the faith he preached.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition that “the Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (prop. 63). The Church in Goa, by its silence about the supernatural truth of St. Francis Xavier’s mission and its appeal to “modern” categories of “communal harmony” and “fraternity,” has proven St. Pius X prophetic. She has shown herself incapable of defending the faith—not because the faith is weak, but because the post-conciliar Church has abandoned the faith.
The Martyrdom of St. Francis Xavier: A Model for Our Times
St. Francis Xavier died on December 3, 1552, on the island of Sancian (Shangchuan), off the coast of China, at the age of forty-six. He died in poverty, in sickness, in obscurity—far from the grandeur of Europe, far from the comforts of home, far from the recognition of men. He died as he had lived: for Christ, for the Church, for the salvation of souls. His body was found incorrupt—a sign, the Church believes, of his sanctity and of God’s favor upon his mission.
The incorrupt body of St. Francis Xavier, exposed in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa, is a silent rebuke to the modern world and to the modernist Church. It proclaims, in the language of flesh and bone, that the Catholic faith is true, that the saints of God are real, that the supernatural is not a myth but a reality. The Hindu activists who call him a “terrorist” are not merely insulting a dead man; they are denying the reality of sanctity, of grace, of the supernatural order itself. They are, in the language of St. Pius X, modernists—men who deny the supernatural and reduce religion to a human phenomenon.
The Church’s response should have been to place the incorrupt body of St. Francis Xavier at the center of her proclamation—to invite all Goans, Hindu and Christian alike, to come and see the body of the saint, to learn about his life, to hear the Gospel he preached, and to convert. Instead, she issued a bureaucratic statement about “hurt sentiments” and called for police action. This is the difference between the Church of the Counter-Reformation and the Church of the Counter-Church. The former converted nations; the latter files complaints with the police.
Conclusion: The Duty of the Faithful
The events in Goa are a microcosm of the crisis of the post-conciliar Church. A saint is insulted; the Church responds with sentiment instead of doctrine; the secular state is invoked as protector; the supernatural dimension of the faith is omitted; the call to conversion is replaced by the call to “communal harmony.” The faithful are left without a clear understanding of why St. Francis Xavier matters, why the Catholic faith is true, and why all men are bound to embrace it.
The duty of the faithful in these times is clear: to proclaim the truth without compromise, to defend the saints of God without apology, and to demand that the Church return to her mission of converting all nations to Christ the King. The faithful must reject the language of “communal harmony” and “fraternity” that the post-conciliar Church has adopted, and they must embrace the language of the Syllabus of Errors, of Quas Primas, of Pascendi Dominici Gregis—the language of truth, of authority, of the supernatural.
St. Francis Xavier did not die on a remote island off the coast of China so that his memory could be reduced to a matter of “hurt sentiments” and “communal harmony.” He died so that souls might be saved, so that the Church might be established, so that Christ might be known and loved and served by all nations. To defend his memory is to defend the faith itself. And to defend the faith is to proclaim, with the full authority of the Church: Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, and there is no salvation outside His Church.
Let the faithful of Goa, and the faithful everywhere, take courage from the example of St. Francis Xavier. Let them proclaim the truth without fear, without compromise, and without the cowardly language of the post-conciliar revolution. Let them demand that their pastors preach Christ crucified—not “communal harmony,” not “dialogue,” not “fraternity,” but the full, uncompromising, supernatural truth of the Catholic faith. In hoc signo vinces. In this sign, you shall conquer.
Source:
Indian police arrest Hindu YouTuber over St. Francis Xavier ‘terrorist’ jibe (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 29.04.2026