In the 16th century CE, the king of Portugal sent the Jesuit Francis Xavier to spread the Christian faith in what was then called the East Indies. He reached India in 1542, in 1549 he travelled to Japan, and he died in 1552 whilst heading to China. So began the Catholic missionary activity in East Asia. However, except for the Philippines, the evangelical efforts did not bear the expected fruit, and even today Christians are a minority in Asia. The Protestant missionaries also tried to convert Asian populations to Christianity, and Anglicanism was predominant in the colonies and protectorates under the influence of the British Empire.

The Nostra Aetate Declaration, proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in October 1965, during the Second Vatican Council, signalled a change in relations with non-Christian religions and opened a new stage of interreligious dialogue and ecumenism in Catholicism. One result of this dialogue is the efforts to translate and study the scriptures of other traditions, seeking points of contact and mutual understanding.