Prior to the arrival of the Jesuit Spanish missionaries, there was no organized mission work as yet in Gujarat. “Except for an isolated, short missionary effort from 1321 to 1324, no other effort to preach the Gospel to non-Christians can be traced during nineteen hundred years.”1 While it is true that the Catholic Church in Gujarat was pioneered by a diocesan priest, Fr. Manuel Xavier Gomes (1893), it flourished substantially under the untiring efforts, pastoral care and unparalleled zeal of the Spanish Jesuit Missionaries who arrived in Gujarat in 1921. Of course, their pastoral merits are hugely shared by their collaborators – their right-hand Catechist masters, the Spanish Sisters who arrived in 1951, Indian Jesuits and Sisters and the diocesan clergy. We shall take a bird’s eye view of the pioneering contribution of the Spanish Jesuits from the pastoral perspective.
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