Portugal: is there another small nation with such a long list of works done for Christendom? Perhaps only Ireland rivals it in its historical influence among small Christian realms. The country which would be known as "Spain"* was bound to be great: a large population of many nations with a large territory.But Portugal? Who could guess in 1220 that one day that tiny country with a tinier population would evangelize half of South America and that its sons, including its adopted ones (such as Xavier), would extend the boundaries of the Catholic Faith to the most distant lands of the Earth?
That there are still Catholics in the great nation of India, as well as in other countries of the subcontinent, in Japan, in China, in Malaysia, in East Timor (where they form a majority); in Angola, Mozambique, in beautiful emerald isles which dot the Atlantic; and in the largest nominally-Catholic nation on Earth, Brazil, to which God gave the privilege, in these our troubled times, of the largest geographical concentration of traditional Catholics in the world; all this and more are works of Portugal.
Why was the small Portuguese land the one chosen by the Lord to start the period of the Great Discoveries which would forever change the Church and establish the global hegemony of the Christian (afterwards post-Christian) West? Why was that land chosen by God to fulfill, at last, the Malachi prophecy that a clean sacrifice would be offered to the Lord in all the roundness of the Earth?
There are geographical, historical, sociological explanations for this miracle. There is also a supernatural one, which I dare propose: the extraordinary vocation of Portugal was the result of the intercession of five innocent souls, five Italians who, from Portugal, were sent by God to the Muslim lands, where they would die as martyrs in the hands of Muslims. Portugal would adopt these martyrs as its own, its king would bring their relics back to the small Christian realm.
Those were the Franciscan Protomartyrs, whose feast is celebrated on January 16. As main patrons of this page, their story will be told in the next few days.
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*up to the late 16th century, Hispania ("Spain" or "the Spains") was the name of all of Iberia, and not our modern notion of Iberia without Portugal.
