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Today’s missionary hero is John Fraser, founder of the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society (Scarboro Missions).
John was born in 1877 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Scottish immigrants.
After finishing his undergraduate work in Canada, he was sent to Collegio Brignole Sale in Genoa, Italy to study for the priesthood. In this school, he was greatly influenced by the missionaries who had returned from their mission work around the world.
Fr. Fraser was ordained in Genoa specifically “for the missions,” and after visiting his family in Canada, he set sail for China in 1902. Fr. John is believed to be the first North American to be a Catholic missionary in China.
After 8 years, Fr. John visited Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, and the United States, to raise interest in his work in China. One man he greatly inspired was Edward Galvin, a priest who later went on to found the Missionary Society of St. Columban.
In November of 1918, Fr. Fraser received permission to form a mission college, and in 1919 he opened this college in a renovated flour mill. Later, the new seminary moved to Scarborough, and the China Mission Seminary became known as Scarboro Missions.
In time, many of the graduates joined him in China. Because of his work, the Vatican gave him the title of Monsignor in 1932.
In 1941, Msgr. John had to return to Canada to attend to important matters of his growing mission society. On his return to China, he became trapped in Manila, Philippines because of the outbreak of World War II. There, he was interned for three-and-a-half years and returned to Canada, destitute, in 1945.
In 1946, Msgr. John returned to China and continued his work. Three years later though, in 1949, he returned to Toronto to attend the second General Chapter of the Society. He never got to return to China, for the Communists had taken power and forbade the entry of Christian missionaries. His fellow Scarboro Missionary priests were expelled from China.
As a result of being banned from China, Msgr. Fraser set his sights on Japan. Invited by the bishop of Nagasaki, John began his new missionary adventures, in 1950, at the age of 73. In Japan, he founded churches and schools throughout the country.
On September 3, 1962, Monsignor John Fraser died in Osaka and is buried there in the Catholic cemetery.
