According to heritage enthusiast Fr. Cosme Jose Costa, residents of Govapuri may have venerated the Cross as early as 52 CE, when St. Thomas the Apostle is believed to have arrived in Goa before continuing his mission to Kerala and Tamil Nadu. A significant testimony to pre-Portuguese Christianity was the discovery of a 6th-century stone cross on the banks of the Zuari at Agassaim. The cross, with equal arms and an inscription in Pahlavi, the language of Persian traders, was discovered by Fr. Costa in 2001 and is preserved at the Pilar Seminary Museum.
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With the arrival of the Portuguese, devotion to the Cross deepened further. The ships that sailed to India bore the “Portuguese Cross” of the Order of Christ, a Catholic order established in 1319. The symbol, closely tied to Portugal’s Age of Discoveries under Prince Henry the Navigator, became an emblem of voyages, alongside other symbols such as the armillary globe and the orb surmounted by a cross, representing Christ’s rule over the world.
