3 December – St Francis Xavier Feast 
Each year, on 3rd December, marks the anniversary of St Francis Xavier’s death, when thousands gather at the Basilica of Bom Jesus.
This annual festival, known as the Feast of St Francis Xavier or Goinchea Saibache Fest, (Lord of Goa Festival), is the biggest of all the Christian festivals in Goa. People from near and far come to participate in the morning mass. 

St Francis Xavier came to Goa as a missionary in 1542, and began preaching to both the Goans and his fellow Europeans. During the next ten years he converted many thousands to Christianity, despite the resistance of some of the European officials he encountered, as well as language constraints.
He died of a fever on a Chinese island in 1552, at just 46 years old, and was brought back to Goa a few years later.

In 1637 his body was laid to rest in a silver casket, constructed by Goan silversmiths, who blended beautifully both Italian and Indian aesthetics in its design. 32 silver plates placed on the sides of the casket each depict a different episode in the life of the Saint. The casket was placed in the Basilica of Bom Jesus where it remains to this day. Once every ten years there is a public viewing of his body, the next being due in 2024.

Considered one of the greatest missionaries since St Paul, the anniversary of his death is also remembered in Spain, the land of his birth, as The Day of Navarre (Día de Navarra)

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10 September - Our Lady of Good Health or Our Lady of Vailankanni
The Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health, also known as Sanctuary of Our Lady of Vailankanni, is a Marian shrine located at the small town of Velankanni in Tamil Nadu, South India. 

Although there is no historical document or record about the reputed apparitions of Mary at Vailankanni, oral tradition has passed down the story of two Marian apparitions at Vailankanni in the 16th century and the saving of Portuguese sailors from a storm in the Bay of Bengal in the 17th century.  

According to tradition, the first apparition is said to have occurred to a young boy delivering buttermilk to a man who lived far away. During his travels, the boy stopped to rest beside a lake that was shaded by a Banyan tree. A beautiful woman, carrying a child, is said to have appeared, and asked the boy for some milk to feed her child, which he gave. When he reached the home for his milk delivery, he apologised for the delay and that there would be less milk in his pot. But when they opened the lid of the milk pot, the container was brimming with milk.

The second apparition is alleged to have occurred a few years later. A lame boy would sell buttermilk to passing travellers, who would pause in the shade of a large Banyan tree, to escape the heat of the day. However, he had no customers. According to the account, suddenly, an ethereal woman, holding a child appeared before him, and asked for a cup of buttermilk. He gave her a cup, which she fed to her child. The woman asked the boy to go to Nagapattinam, and find a certain Catholic man in the town, and tell him to build a chapel at Vailankanni in her honour. Apparently cured, the boy ran to Nagapattinam, where he found the man and told him his story. The Catholic men of Nagapattinam subsequently built a thatched chapel at Vailankanni, dedicated to Mary under the title of "Our Lady of Good Health".

In the 17th century, a Portuguese merchant vessel sailing from Macau to Ceylon was caught in a severe storm in the Bay of Bengal.The sailors prayed fervently for Mary, Star of the Sea to save them, and promised to build a church in her honor wherever they could land. The sea became calm, and their ship landed near Vailankanni on 8 September, the Feast of the Nativity of Mary. To honor their promise, the Portuguese rebuilt the thatched chapel into a stone church. The church was later renovated twice in the early 20th century. 

Although these alleged apparitions have not been formally approved by the Holy See, they were implicitly approved by Pope John XXIII's 1962 elevation of the Vailankanni church to minor basilica status. The Pope's apostolic brief noted that pilgrims in large numbers had been visiting the shrine for a long period of time, and that it was hailed as the "Lourdes of the East”