The Life and Martyrdom of Diego Luis de San Vitores, S.J.
is a collection of official and unofficial letters and documents in addition to testimonies collected shortly after the death of Diego Luis de San Vitores, S.J., the Jesuit priest who established the Catholic religion in the island of Guam in the late 1600s. This book captures both the life and events surrounding the death of San Vitores and a narrative of subsequent events in the Mariana Islands from 1672 to 1681. The scope of the book includes not just the four brief years of San Vitores’ time in Guam, but another ten years of missionary work following his death. It offers a detailed description of the early critical years of mission activity between 1668 and 1682 in this earliest of mission fields in Oceania.
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James A. Mc Donough, S.J. received a doctorate in Classical Philology from Harvard University (1953). He published two critical editions of works by Gregory of Nyssa under the auspices of the Harvard Institute for Classical Studies in the Netherlands: Inscriptiones Psalmorum Brill (1962) and Contra Fatum Brill (1987). He was a distinguished professor of languages and literature as well as an administrator at the University of Guam from 1969-1994 when he retired and shortly thereafter was given Emeritus status. Mc Donough returned to the classroom for special courses and completed his teaching career at the end of the semester in which he celebrated his 90th birthday in 2001. With a gift for languages, he read widely and conferred an enthusiasm for learning. In addition, he was a Jesuit for over 70 years and brought his experiences to bear on his work. Through his efforts this description of Jesuit missionary efforts in Guam and the Marianas written from first-hand accounts by Francisco García, S.J. is presented in translation for the first time in one complete edition.