Storia do Mogor 281.19.5

281.19.5

[All this ruin has sprung] from the indiscreet zeal, to call it nothing worse, of the reverend fathers, the French Jesuits of Pondicherry [60]. They wished to display it [their zeal] in order to distinguish their work from that of the Capuchins, the first missionaries in these parts. These men set to work more simply and more prudently. In the thirty years that they have been settled alongside the Royal Company of France in its commercial settlement, I do not merely say that they have provoked no persecutions, but they have not lost even one of those whom it has pleased God to convert by their means. It is the contrary with the reverend fathers (the Jesuits) at this present date, it being now only two and a half years since they usurped this mission and took it from those poor fathers [the Capuchins]. They have taken from them their cure of souls by intrigues, by the use of influence, and, above all, by a false allegation in regard to the will and pleasure of the Most Christian king [Louis XIV.]. They (the Jesuits) have already succeeded in making 6,000 Tanjor Christians into idolaters, and I have no need to speak of those who will become such hereafter.