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In many ways, missionary efforts defined the resurgent Church of the Counter- Reformation. Within Europe, the thrust of Catholic missions was to win back supporters from Protestant or mixed areas while at the same time, shoring up the Catholic base of support in key areas like Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Outside of Europe, missionary efforts focused on establishing footholds for Catholic converts in Latin American and Asia.
Within Europe, new orders like The Clerks Regular of St. Paul (Barnabites) undertook missionary activity designed to reach out to hitherto neglected sectors of the population. The Jesuits (founded 1540) spread rapidly both within the staunchly Catholic heartland of Europe (Italy, Spain, and Portugal) and mixed or Protestant areas. Everywhere they went, the Jesuits took the lead in winning over, or winning back, members of the social and intellectual elite for the cause of Catholicism.
Outside of Europe, especially in Asia, it was also the Jesuits who took the lead in establishing missions. The Jesuit presence in Japan began when St. Francis Xavier (1506–52 arrived in 1549 and laid the groundwork for a Japanese Church that numbered some 300,000 by the early seventeenth century. The terrible persecutions of the late 1630s, which took tens of thousands of lives, drove the movement underground but never succeeded in entirely eliminating it.
In China, European missionary work formally began with the entry of the Jesuit Matteo Ricci in 1583. Ricci, who had taken great care to learn Chinese and immerse himself in Chinese culture, proved remarkably successful. The Church he started increased rapidly, reaching about 115,000 by the mid-1660s but ultimately could not overcome the intolerant, anti foreign trends that emerged at the end of the seventeenth century.
The Jesuits approach to Chinese missionary work, which entailed a certain accommodation with native culture, was also highly controversial and stirred the enmity of rival religious orders. This rivalry led to the so-called “Chinese Rites" issue, which was resolved only by the papal decree Ex quo singulari of 1742. By this decree, the period of accommodation was brought to an end. Increasing suspicion by the Chinese authorities and the hostility of the Franciscans and other traditional orders doomed Chinese Christianity to minority status. Nevertheless, the Church the Jesuits created still survives in China with an estimated six million Catholics.
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