The saint was one day publicly exposed, with his feet bare, at the importunity of the people, who through devotion petitioned to kiss them.  A woman, who passionately desired to have a relick of Xavier, drawing near, as if it were to have kissed his foot, fastened her teeth in it, and bit off a little piece of flesh.  The blood immediately ran in great abundance out of it; and of so pure a crimson, that the most healthful bodies could not send out a more living colour.  The physicians, who visited the corpse from time to time, and who always deposed, that there could be nothing of natural in what they saw, judged, that the blood which came from a body deprived of heat, and issued from a part so distant from the heart as is the foot, could be no other than the effect of a celestial virtue; which not only preserved all parts of it from putrefaction, but also caused the humours to flow, and maintained them in the motion which only life infuses in them.

So many wonders, which spread through all the East, and were transmitted into every part of Europe, so moved the heart of Paul V. that he finally performed what his predecessor had designed.  After a juridical examen of the virtues and miracles above-mentioned, he declared beatified Francis Xavier, priest of the Society of Jesus, by an express bull, dated the 25th of October, in the year 1619.

Gregory XV., who immediately succeeded Pope Paul V., canonized him afterwards in all the forms, and with all the procedures, which the church observes on the like occasions.  The ceremony was performed at Rome on the 12th of March, in the year 1622.  But as death prevented him from making the bull of the canonization, it was his successor Urban VIII. who finally accomplished it.

This bull bearing date the 6th of August, in the year 1623, is an epitome and panegyric of the miraculous life of the saint.  It is there said, “That the new apostle of the Indies has spiritually received the blessing which God vouchsafed to the patriarch Abraham, that he was the father of many nations; and that he saw his children in Jesus Christ multiplied beyond the stars of heaven, and the sands of the sea:  That, for the rest, his apostleship has had the signs of a divine vocation, such as are the gift of tongues, the gift of prophecy, the gift of miracles, with the evangelical virtues in all perfection.”

The bull reports almost all the miracles which we have seen in his life, particularly the resurrections of the dead; and, amongst other miraculous cures, which were wrought after his decease, it observes those of Gonsalvo Fernandez, Mary Bias, and Emanuel Rodriguez Figheredo.  It also mentions two famous cures, of which we have said nothing.  One is of a blind man, who having prayed to God nine days successively, by the order of Xavier, who appeared to him, instantly recovered his sight.  The other was of a leper, who being anointed, and rubbed over, with the oil of a lamp, which burned before the image of Xavier, was entirely cured.  The Pope has added in his bull, “That the lamps which hung before the image, which was venerated at Cotata, often burned with holy-water, as if they had been full of oil, to the great astonishment of the heathens.”  The other miracles which we have related, and which are omitted in the bull, are contained in the acts of the process of the canonization.