India, April 8 -- We're in the middle of the 40-day season of Lent, when good Catholics choose to give up certain luxuries, including favourite food and drink, until Easter Sunday, the joyous commemoration of Jesus Christ's Resurrection. Which makes it a good time to remember the very first Catholic church that came up in the city, and the French missionary who set it up, Abbe (Abbot) Jean-Antoine Dubois.

Cut to 16th century Europe. Soon after the pathbreaking voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama had opened up the western and eastern worlds to Europe, Spain and Portugal received from the Pope the exclusive right to evangelize conquered lands, and went at it full-tilt (as we know from the Portuguese excesses in Goa). By the m...