Faith in Mary, A-Bomb survivor
Bishop of Nagasaki: "In the Feast Day of the Assumption the whole of Japan will join together to pray for peace."
Nagasaki (AsiaNews) On Sunday, August 15, celebrations for the Feast of the Assumption, prayers for peace, and remembrance for the dead will bring together the people of Japan. On this day, whilst all will commemorate the end of World War Two, Catholics will celebrate the Assumption of Mary, and Buddhists will observe the day of the dead.
The need to pray "for the inner reawakening of modern man" so that "he may find peace in God", are the reasons the Pope is journeying to Lourdes this Sunday. In Japan, these reasons take on a special meaning. Ever since that fateful day on August 9, 1945, when the atomic bomb killed 73.884 people in Nagasaki, believers of every creed pray every year for peace.
The bomb that destroyed the city also destroyed the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Urakami, the greatest Catholic building of its kind in the Far East. "Around 8,500 Christians perished in the blast," Msgr. Joseph Takami Mitsuaki, Archbishop of Nagasaki, told AsiaNews. "The only survivor was faith in Our Lady, especially among the city's inhabitants, who remain very devoted to her."
History explains the metaphor, for the Cathedral's chapel was once host to a statue of Mary that had come from Italy and had been inspired by a portrait of the Immaculate made by Spanish painter Murillo (1618-1682). The bomb burnt it.
After the war, Father Kaemon Noguchi, a Trappist a monk, returned home. Among the rubble of the Cathedral, he found the statue's head. He kept it for several years in his monastery on the Island of Hokkaido. On the 30th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb in 1975 he decided to take it back to Nagasaki. The head is now on display in the Cathedral, which was rebuilt in 1959.
"No special celebrations will take place in Japan to mark the Pope's journey to Lourdes," said Bishop Takami. "Few Japanese Catholics are aware of it and, most likely, it will be talked about after it has ended."
Still, many people feel close to Lourdes, in great part thanks to the Militia Immaculatae, the Holy Union of the Knights of the Immaculata founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe within the Franciscan Order and present in Nagasaki since 1931.
The Union's convent is called the "City of the Immaculate" where it keeps an image of Our Lady of Lourdes. Many pilgrims come there, "especially in May and October," the Bishop said, "when processions and functions in honour of Mary are organised."
"This Sunday," Bishop Takami added, "we shall celebrate mass in the Seibo-no-kishi, [the convent's name in Japanese] and pray for peace. We shall thus feel closer to the Holy Father."
From September 3 and 15 some friars from the Knights of the Immaculata Convent in Nagasaki will join their brethren from around the world in a pilgrimage to Lourdes. According to the president of the Union of the Knights of the Immaculata Father Eugenio Malignano, on the 150th anniversary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception they will "renew the consecration of their faith in Mary as the only path to reach God."
In the diocese of Nagasaki, there are close to 70,000 Catholics in a population of over 1.5 million people.
.png)
