Preparing to visit Ghana

I am visiting Ghana from 29 July to 12 August.  Therefore, a new post for this blog will not appear till 13 August since I will not carry my laptop for this trip.  Main purpose of the trip will be attending the ordination Mass for SVD priests in Accra on 7 August.  Most probably I will be honored to preside over the ordination Mass for the Ghana Province of the Divine Word Missionaries, SVD.  What is so special for this ordination of priests in Ghana this year which attracts me to travel all the way from Japan?  One of the ordinands, Frt. Martin Akwetey Dumas is originally from Osonson, Krobo.  While I was a parish priest of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Osonson from 1987 to 1994,  Frt. Martin was a small boy, probably in primary or middle school, and one of the most active member of the Osonson Alter Boys.  His father, Mr. Dumas used be one of the chief catechists of the parish and contributed a lot especially in my parish office to keep records of sacraments and to issue baptismal cards.  Quite a number of former alter boys from Osonson at that time tried to join the priesthood but no one so far had managed to be ordained before Frt. Martin.  Please remember him and his family in your prayer.  He will preside over his first Mass in Osonson on 8 August and I will give a homily.

Last week I was in Hokkaido for a week.  On Saturday, 24 July, from 3 to 5 pm, I gave a talk on Africa in Kitaichijo Church in Sapporo.  The talk was organised by the Justice and Peace Committee of the Sapporo diocese as part of the several activities for the Peace commemoration weeks in Japan which will concluded with Peace Memorial Mass on 15 August, the day when Japanese government declare to surrender to allied forces in 1945.

Prior to the talk on Saturday, I visited north east of Hokkaido with Fr. Kato, the chancellor and reached Shiretoko Peninsula, the world natural heritage site.  Photo above is taken in the peninsula with Ezo deer and Mt.Rausu in background.  It was quite cold in that part of Japan though most of Japan was suffering of heat wave during the week.  Because of the drastic difference of the temperature, I caught cold and experienced prolonged high fever.  So with these symptoms of cold during very hot summer, I could feel that Japan is so widely spread from north to south.

Please remember Frt. Martin in your prayer and also pray for me so that I will fulfill my sacred duty as a bishop well and return home safe and sound.  So see you on 13 August and have a blessed and hot summer.      

The 3rd anniversary of the earthquake in Kashiwazaki area

Today, 16 July, is the 3rd anniversary of the earthquake in Kashiwazaki area.  The quake is called "Chuetsu-oki Jishin" which took 15 peoples lives and more than 1,300 houses were completely destroyed. Parish in Kashiwazaki under the pastoral care of the OFM Fathers was also affected by the quake.  Since the parish priest, Fr. Bassi who built the church is an architect, the church building was not so much affected but the kindergarten building was.  Number of Catholic members were also affected at that time.  During the early stage of recovery, the Parish community organised themselves to offer lunch and other services from the Kindergarten garage to the local people who had lost everything.  The community did very well.  Since then, the local government did very well to execute the recovery programme and local people cooperated well including the Parish community.  As we are hearing the news of severe rain fall and flood in several places in Japan for past few days, I do remember all those who have been affected by these natural disasters in my prayer.  (Photo above; a destroyed temple.  This temple has been restored recently)

By the way, the year 2010 is the 100th anniversary of birth of Mather Teresa of Calcutta and there will be the Mother Teresa Film Festival in all over Japan organized by local organising committee.  Though Catholic Church is not the main force to organise these events, the Japanese Bishops Conference is fully supporting the event.  And from 24 July to 6 August, the festival is coming to Niigata.  The venue is the "Cine Wind" in Bandai area in Niigata.  From 24 to 30 July,  the show will begin at 10 am and end at 6:20 pm with 6 shows (films).  From 31 July to 6 August, the show will begin at 2:30 pm and end at 5:45 pm with 2 shows (films).  A ticket for each show will cost JPY 1,200.  I am not so sure but you may need 6 tickets to complete the 6 shows if you wish to stay for a whole day.  You might find more detailed information in your own parish centers.

Mass at Hokusanbara in Yonezawa

Blessed Peter Kibe and his companions, all together 188 blessed martyrs of Japan, was once again commemorated this year on and around 1st July, their feast day, in various locations in Japan including  Yonezawa where 53 of them had been executed during the persecution period.  More than 100 faithful, mainly from parishes in Yamagata district, gathered together in Hokusanbara where Blessed Luis Amakasu and 52 companions were executed on 12 January, 1629 to join the Holy Eucharist celebrated by 4 priests and myself.  Last year May, we had the first celebration after their beatification in November 2008 in Nagasaki.  More than 900 people came to join the celebration in May and we had to ask permission from city government of Yonezawa and police department to close the surrounding streets to let people stand and join the Mass.  We have decided not to invite so many people this year so that neighbours would allow us to continue this celebration for many more years.  After so many years since the Samurai era in Japan, though the Church had managed to purchase part of the former execution ground of Hokusanbara, the place has been developed and now have been surrounded by private houses where no Catholics are living at all.  So we have to negotiate with the local community before we proceed to plan our own celebration in Hokusanbara.  Most probably, we might plan much more grand celebration every 5 years or so to invite pilgrims from all over the diocese.

July is rainy season in Japan and we were worried about the weather on Sunday, 4th July.  It was raining on Saturday.  However, as we started the Mass at 11 am on 4th July, Sunday, we were blessed be under beautiful sunshine.  Thank God for this blessing.  In fact, it started to rain by the time we all finished Mass and lunch.

After the Mass, people were divided into 6 or so groups to have lunch together and continue with sharing session on several themes related to evangelisation in Japan.  There are 5 communities in Yamagata district, Yonezawa, Yamagata, Nagai, Tsuruoka and Sakata.  Then one community is now emerging from Shinjo.  Shinjo community is mainly by Filipino Catholics and their children.  In fact, through generous assistance from many and through their own efforts, the Shinjo community are now building their own Church.  Thank God for this blessing.  Though Yamagata district is not so big, people are scattered around and are able to meet only once a while.  So that the sharing session after the lunch was really inspiring for many.  I would like to thank especially for the members of Yonezawa for their effort to prepare for the celebration.  Lunch box which they chose and bought was wonderful.  Thank you.  Though the community of Yonezawa is not so big, they are trying very well to keep the tradition inherited from Martyrs of Yonezawsa and maintaining good spirits.

Sapporo diocese priests assembly

The beginning of last month, June, priests assembly or rally for Niigata was held in Akita for 3 days.  Now it is the turn of Sapporo diocese and 41 priests and a brother working in the Sapporo diocese had gathered together in Hanakawa, an hour drive from central Sapporo, for their annual priests assembly for 3 days from 28 to 30 June.  There were diocesan priests, Maryknoll missionaries, Paris missionaries, Jesuit and Franciscans.  In fact, territory wise, Franciscans are taking care of majority of territories of the dioceses.  Diocesan priests who are not so many in numbers are much more concentrated in the Sapporo area.

I joined the gathering as the apostolic administrator and also as a lecture.  On the second day, the feast day of St Peter and Paul, I gave an talk for 2 hours on my experience in Ghana and Rwanda as a missionary.  The chairman of the priest council, Fr. Katsuya, had asked me to give a talk on building  the Small Christian Community since I had translated a book "The Small Christian Communities" a few years ago and was a member of formation team in Nagoya diocese.  However, my experience as the member of that formation team in Nagoya and as a bishop of Niigata, I now have other idea to build a parish community in Japanese Church.  So I just shared my experience in my parish in Ghana and talked about the basics of building community which we can learn from foreign assistance activity of Church through Caritas.  I have been working for Caritas Japan since 1995 and, at this moment, serving as the president for the 2nd term.  My experience in Caritas tells me that the assitance given by Caritas is quite connected with community building from which Church may learn a lot.  

Then in the evening of 29, we invited Bishop Jinushi, the emeritus bishop of Sapporo who was celebrating his names day for Peter, to have BBQ dinner together.  Photo above is Bishop Jinushi receiving gift.  It was a very hot day.  They told me that usually in the end of June should be cool and fine, but for this year it was completely strange.

I flew from Sapporo to Tokyo on Wednesday to attend 2 meetings in the Bishops Conference on Thursday and I am in Sendai this evening.  I have to give a talk on Africa tomorrow at Sendai Shirayuri University for their adult education class.  Then I will drive down to Yonezawa.  Since 1st July is the feast day for Blessed 188 martyrs of Japan and 53 are from Yonezawa, we are going to have the memorial Mass in Yonezawa on Sunday at 11 am.  Come and join us in Hokusanbara, the place where 53 Blessed were martyred in 1629.

More foreign aid needed to build peace

I have been granted a chance to meet someone whom I wanted to meet for so many years.  Finally I managed to meet her in her office in Tokyo on Tuesday.  She is the president of JICA, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Ms. Sadako OGATA. 

In April 1995, I was in Bukavu, Zaire as a coordinator for Caritas Japan team working in one of more than 30 Rwandan refugee camps in the area.  It was exactly one year after the beginning of genocide in Rwanda.  On 11 April at 10 pm, our camp, situated in a village called Birava, was attacked by several armed soldiers coming from the lake Kivu which was the border between Zaire and Rwanda.  They managed to cross the lake by 3 boats, according to several eye witnesses. The Birava camp was facing against to Rwanda where refugees, Futu people, came from.  Officially, no one knows who were these soldiers who attacked the camp that night.  Rumor among refugees said they were RPF from present Rwanda.  No one knows.  What I remember is 2 hours of exchange of fire and sounds of bomb blasts.  What I remember is more than 30 dead and more than 150 injured people.  I was shaken.  I can not forget the experience of that night.  Still as at now, whenever I pass by the construction site and hear the sound of jackhammer, I immediately recall that night.  At that time, we could not rely on the Mobutu's army since they were not paid enough or at all.  So we wrote a letter of appeal among Caritas members in the area to Ms. Ogata who was the High Commissioner of Refugees of UN at that time.  The local representative of UNHCR in Bukavu was Mr. Patrick D'souza who used to work for Caritas before.  He immediately took action and negotiated with the UN to hire Zaire soldiers as their own security force to protect camps.  So I wanted to thank Ms. Ogata for quick response at that time.

Now working for Japanese government as the president of the Government foreign aid agency, she shared a lot on foreign aid policy of Japan and peace building.  This meeting was organised by the publisher, Don Bosco and will appear as their article on the September issue of "Katolikku Seikatsu", a Japanese Catholic monthly magazine.  Ms. Ogata is a practising Catholic.  She emphasised that Japanese people have to realise that Japan can not survive by itself alone but only in cooperation with other countries.  To secure world peace, development aid to poorer countries is a must for Japan.

GA of CBCJ concluded

A week long general assembly of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan (CBCJ) for the year 2010 has just been completed on Friday afternoon in Japan Catholic Center in Tokyo.  All together, 16 bishops and one administrator joined the assembly together with representatives from both male and female major superiors in Japan.  Presently there are 16 dioceses in Japan and auxiliary bishops have been assigned to Tokyo and Osaka, one for each, so that there should be 18 bishops to join the assembly.  However there are 2 sees vacant at this moment in Japan, Oita and Sapporo, and, therefore, one administrator joined the assembly from Oita.  (I am the administrator of Sapporo)

Almost 90 % of the agenda had been proposed by the Liturgy Commission, especially on the translation of Mass text for which the Liturgy Commission has been working for quite sometime.  We had to go through Latin text, present Japanese text and newly proposed translation text at the same time for entire Mass.  In fact, it takes time and we have not finished yet.  When we completed the discussion on the proposed text for this year's agenda, a secretary for the commission told us that he had 5 times more texts ready for us to discuss during next assembly.  We just heard that the English translation has just completed and got the approval from the Holy See recently but I have no idea how many more years it may take to complete the Japanese translation.

On Wednesday evening, after the afternoon presentation given by Caritas Japan on foreign aid policy of the Catholic aid agency, we went to visit the Nunciature in Tokyo.  Photo above is the chapel of the Nunciature which was renovated recently and the Nuncio is explaining us about the newly installed bronze door of the chapel.  After this, Nuncio presented a congratulatory message of Holy Father to Bishop Misue of Hiroshima who has been celebrating his 25th anniversary as bishop this year.  Then the meeting was completed with wonderful Italian dinner.

Well I finally managed to come back to my house in Niigata.  I left Niigata last Friday to Sapporo where I had to give a talk on Saturday in Maruyama parish.  Then after the talk, I flew from Sapporo to Akita to join the Akita district for Laity Rally on Sunday.  Fr. Xavier Susai, SVD, a rector of the SVD seminary in Nagoya gave a talk on the Christian vocation and I said Mass in the afternoon.  Indian born rector of the seminary attracted the laity of Akita district with his wonderful Japanese and several jokes.  From there I flew to Tokyo on Monday to join the GA of CBCJ.  Well, I have to fly again this evening to Sapporo while Japanese National Team is playing in South Africa against to Holland.  There will be confirmation Mass in Sapporo tomorrow.
 

Priests' rally in Akita

From 7 June to 9, Niigata diocesan priests' rally was held in Akita which was attended by 29 priests working in the diocese, including both diocesan and religious priests.  At this moment, all together 38 priests are working in the diocese including 2 elder Fathers who have been on their retirement.  Out of this 38, 17 are diocesan priests of Niigata, 2 are of Takamatsu, one from Tokyo diocese, 3 belongs to the Picpus Fathers, 5 belongs to the Franciscans and 10 are SVDs.  This year, the diocese received 2 new priests from SVD, Fr.Hayon, a newly ordained, from Indonesia to Akita and Fr. Odilon from Korea to Tsuchizaki.  We gathered together at Foresta Chokai Hotel in southern Akita.  Hotel is located at the foot of Mount Chokai and surrounded by deep forest.

As we are approaching to the end of the Year of Priests, we chose the theme which is closely related to the daily pastoral realities of priests.  Since Japanese bishops have been talking about the Human Life which is a gift of God, we decided to learn more about the life threatening issue in the area, the suicide issue.  Since 1998, immediately after the current economic recession has started in Japan, more than 30,000 people began to commit suicide every year up till now in all over Japan.  Number is increasing each year and Akita is well known in Japan as the area to record the highest rate of suicide almost every year.  People commit suicide because of financial difficulties, family problem, personal relationship and many other causes but most of the cases have been connected to the depression.  We invited professor Sasaki Hisanaga of Akita University who has been involving himself with the prevention effort of the local government.  Professor Sasaki is a Catholic.  We also invited Bishop Koda Kazuo of Tokyo who has been working on the topic as a bishop in charge of Caritas Japan.  Church has to learn more about the issue to be ready to respond to the need of people who are in danger of committing suicide and also to learn more about how to console the grief of families and relatives of those who committed the suicide.