Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Blessed Odoric of Pordenone was a Franciscan missionary who wrote a medieval bestseller, the tales of what he had seen on his trip to the East. This trip took him all the way to China, where he saw and worked in a mission that flourished two centuries before St. Francis Xavier tried to bring the Christian faith into the country.
Blessed Odoric was born in 1265 to the noble Mattiussi family. He entered the Franciscans at the Friary of Udine, in the far northeast of Italy, perhaps when he was 15. After he completed his formation and was ordained a priest, he lived as a hermit for a while. Then, having prepared himself with prayer and penance, he preached in Friuli, in Carnia and Dalmatia, that is, around the area where he was had entered the Friars and had been born.
But he felt called to take the Gospel even further. He asked permission to become a missionary, and when this was granted, he went to work in the East, in the Balkans, it appears. Unlike his later mission, we know almost nothing about what he did during this period. He returned home after 17 years, perhaps to rest, but then he was called to undertake a new mission, bringing the Gospel to the farthest corners of the earth.
John of Montecorvino had established a mission in the capital of China, and he needed help. The Mongol conquest had not all been bad. One positive consequence was that there was now a vast area under their dominion, and this made it easier to travel to the Far East, though still not very easy.
Franciscan and Dominican missionaries were sent to make the difficult trek to contact the Khan, and hopefully spread the faith, especially to him. If he would adopt it, and it was spread in this vast empire, it would be a great conquest for our Lord. Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, a Franciscan, departed in 1245, reached the court of the great Khan the following year, and returned to the West in 1247. But the Khan was not interested in becoming a Christian. A Dominican and another Franciscan also made the journey, but none of them found a Khan interested in becoming a Christian.
Then in 1286, Kublai Khan sent word that he was interested in having the missionaries come to China. John of Montecorvino, another Franciscan, set out the following year, accompanied by a Dominican and a merchant. The Dominican died in India, but John made it to China in 1294, after a journey of seven years.
Kublai Khan had just died, but his successor, Temür Khan, gave John freedom to teach the faith. The Mongols were curious and tolerant in matters of religion, and John soon gained the ruler's confidence. In 1299, he built a church, and in 1305, another church opposite the imperial palace. He put together a group of 150 boys, gathering boys between 7 and 11 years of age. He taught them Latin and Greek, wrote psalms and hymns for them, and trained them to serve Mass and to sing in a choir. So he had this great choir of boys singing Gregorian chant, to the delight of the great Khan.
Thousands of people became Catholic, including people of high rank. After 11 years working alone, a German missionary managed to join him in 1304. In 1307, Pope Clement V sent seven Franciscans, to ordain John the Archbishop of Peking, and to serve as his suffragan bishops. Three of them survived the journey. In 1312, another three Franciscans arrived from Rome to serve as suffragan bishops.
This brings us to 1318, when Blessed Odoric set sail from Venice for Constantinople, beginning his long journey to China. Leaving Constantinople, he crossed the Black Sea, and then proceeded slowly overland, to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. There he took ship for India, landing in Thane, near Bombay. So far his journey had taken him four or five years, but he'd taken the opportunity to evangelize as he could along the way.
In this city of Thane, on the edge of Bombay, he found the relics of Blessed Thomas of Tolentino, and two of his companion martyrs, who had been killed not long before, on April 9th, 1321. He brought their relics with him on his journey. These missionaries would be going to China posthumously.
Once again taking ship, he made his way around the Indian coast, stopping in Sri Lanka. He then became the first European to reach the islands that are now called Indonesia. He visited other islands in that area, quite possibly including the Philippines, where he may have celebrated the first Mass on those islands.
Then he landed in southern China. In Zayton, today called Zhuanzhou, he had the pleasure of finding the first two Franciscan friaries, where he deposited the relics of the martyrs that he had brought from India. He then made his way through the cities of Hangzhou and Nanjing, and then beyond the Yangtze. He founded a church at Shantung, crossed the Yellow River, and then finally reached the capital, Khanbaliq, the city of the Khan, today known as Beijing, and formerly known also as Peking.
Here he found the Archbishop of Peking, John of Montecorvino. He stayed with him for three years, serving the 20,000 people who had embraced the faith so far. Then John asked him to go back to Europe and report to the Pope on the situation in China, which he now knew well.
Instead of returning by the way that he had come, he took an overland route, or a northern route, passing through Tibet, Turkistan, Afghanistan, northern Persia, and Armenia, before finally reaching Constantinople, from which he sailed back to Venice. It was now 1330, and he was 65. The total distance he had traveled since he left Venice 12 years earlier was 50,000 kilometers, a quarter more than the circumference of the Earth at the equator.
Now it was time to go see the Pope, and report to him. He learned that John XXII was Pope, and was living in Avignon. So Bl. Odoric set out for France, but in Pisa he had to stop. He fell ill. He knew that he'd never make it to France in that state, so he decided to drag himself back to the region of his birth. He made another stop in Padua before finally reaching the Friary of St. Francis in Udine, where he had entered the Order, so many years ago.
Here he had one last order to obey, an order he didn't much care for. If he couldn't go to the Pope personally, he had to dictate an account of his journey to him. The short book tells of the many marvels that he saw during his travels, and this made it a bestseller during the Middle Ages and beyond. Sixteen of its 38 chapters regard China. But he also talks about many wonders that he saw along the way, many strange things, about the customs, about a sort of pony express that was being used in Persia, about the horrors of idolatry that he saw, with people even wanting to die as victims to their idol.
Then, on January 14th, 1331, he died, and was immediately venerated for working miracles. Bartholomew of Pisa notes a notable, or notes one in particular: he raised from the dead a Franciscan who had lain six days in his tomb, in response to the prayers of that brother's sister.
Now, when he, not long after he'd left China, in 1328, John of Montecorvino died, and he was venerated there as a saint. But there were other Franciscan missionaries still, and so the Church continued, continued to flourish, reaching about 30,000 Christians. But other Franciscans, too, were sent to make the long and difficult journey.
But the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols began to decline. Rebellion spread, and in 1368, their capital was conquered, and the Ming dynasty began. The Catholic Church in China was among the victims of the change of regime. More Franciscans, 21 Franciscans, were sent in 1370, but the Ming government did not welcome them, and quickly wiped out everything that had been built. Archbishops of Peking continued to be appointed into the 15th century, but probably were never able to reach their sea.
But what had been destroyed in China, would one day, be rebuilt. More missionaries would come in the following centuries, and the Church in China would become far larger than it had once been.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.