At over 80 years of age, two missionaries teach the Gospel and serenity
Karatsu (AsiaNews) - They met for the first time in 2004, even though both have been missionaries in Japan for more than 50 years. Almost a confirmation of the geometrical theory of parallels, considering the unfolding of the missionary lives of Fr Max Defoux (aged 86) and Fr Riccardo Magrin (84).
Their points of departure were rather different: Defoux was born in Namur (Belgium) in 1922, and Magrin in a town in the province of Vicenza (Italy) in 1924; and therefore in a divided Europe torn apart by inhuman ideologies, which had grown up in the terrain of rationalistic humanism.
But the two young men found a much different upbringing in their deeply Catholic families, which fostered in both the birth and development of the desire to dedicate their lives to God and neighbour. At this level, their journey along parallel lines began, because this was not a question of a generic vocation, but of the determination to dedicate their lives to the evangelisation of the non-Christian world.
The tragic events of the second world war, although they shocked the two young men, were not able to shake them to their core, because precisely during those years they were receiving their spiritual formation in two missionary institutes, respectively that of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM), commonly called the "missionaries of Scheut" ( Belgium) for Massimiliano, and that of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME, Italy) for Riccardo. Both were ordained priests during the first years following the war: the Belgian in 1947, the Italian in 1949.
The year of his ordination, Defoux, destined for the missions in China together with other of his confreres, left for Beijing, but remained in the Chinese capital for only a few months. The civil war broke out, and the Red Army of Mao Tse-tung was triumphing everywhere. The leadership of the CICM decided, therefore, to send the young missionaries to another mission that had been underway for just a short time: Japan.
After more than two years of study, Massimiliano was able to master the Japanese language, so much so that he was able to take on the leadership of a parish in the city of Osaka. From 1956 to 1964, he had to interrupt his Japanese venture because he had been entrusted with the direction of the novitiate of his congregation in Belgium.
When he returned to Japan, he found himself in a nation profoundly transformed. The extreme poverty of the first years following the war had been replaced by an intense economic dynamism that was beginning to produce wealth. But unfortunately, conversions to Christianity had diminished noticeably. Methods had to change.
Fr Massimiliano was for a number of years involved in reinforcing Christianity in the area of Himeji, not far from the city of Kobe, and in pastoral action on behalf of the imprisoned, especially those condemned to death. Solitude was easily overcome thanks to a hospitality centre for the members of his congregation, created in the city of Himeji.
But suddenly Defoux found himself in Kagoshima, a city in the extreme south of the country. The bishop of the city, Paul Itonaga, who during the war, as a soldier in Manchuria, had met and admired the missionaries of Scheut, asked the superior of the congregation to send one of them to his diocese in order to entrust him the direction of the pastoral centre. The choice fell to Fr Massimiliano.
In 1981, Defoux decided to become a Japanese citizen in order to be able to work more easily on behalf of the Vietnamese refugees (the boat people). His name is now Kokage Minoru.
At the age of 82, when he had decided to retire to a centre for Scheut missionaries, through the "plot" of a Christian woman of Okayama and of her Japanese pastor, Kokage became chaplain of the convent of the Trappist nuns on a hill near the city of Imari (on the island of and Kyushu). The woman, who in her youth had gone to the convent as a postulant, and had found out that the nuns were without a chaplain, obtained together with her pastor that the superior of the Scheut fathers should "suggest" to the Belgian-Japanese missionary that he devote himself to this further service for "a few months". He has been there for four years: and he offers a valuable spiritual service to the Trappist community and to various Christian groups that come to the adjoining retreat house.
The missionary experience of Magrin, though not as geographically varied, was not dissimilar. For decades, he discreetly and fruitfully carried out evangelization activities in some of the cities of the prefecture of Saga (Kyushu). And for him as well, his path to retirement was blocked by a woman, the wife of Doctor Ichiro Ide, founder of the "St. Mary" hospital, one of the best in the city of Kurume, on the island of Kyushu. The elderly and enterprising lady, having found out that the Italian missionary was about to retire, asked him, with the support of the superiors of the PIME, to do this not in Italy but in the hospital founded by her husband. And so for eight years Fr Riccardo, in his white shirt, has gone from room to room offering words of hope to the sick and elderly who desire them, and there are not a few of them, almost all of them non-Christian.
It is said that Japan does not produce Christians. It is certain, however, that it has produced missionaries of the calibre of Max Defoux and Riccardo Magrin, for whom the word "resignation" has been replaced by "hope and serenity".
.png)
24/10/2019 17:56
