Pope to beatify 188 Japanese martyrs: archbishop

03-04-2007, 08h46

TOKYO (AFP)

Pope Benedict XVI blesses the faithfull during a weekly general audience at the Vatican in February. The Vatican is planning to beatify 188 Japanese martyred in the early 17th century, giving Japan's small Roman Catholic community a boost, an archbishop said Sunday. Pope Benedict XVI is expected to approve the process in April with a ceremony set for November, Nagasaki's Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami said. (AFP/File)

The Vatican is planning to beatify 188 Japanese martyred in the early 17th century, giving Japan's small Roman Catholic community a boost, an archbishop said Sunday.

Pope Benedict XVI is expected to approve the process in April with a ceremony set for November, Nagasaki's Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami said.

Beatification is an act of the Pope to declare that a deceased person deserves public veneration, a first step toward canonisation, or the elevation to sainthood.

Mother Teresa, who won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work in Calcutta and died in 1997, was blessed with the honour in 2003.

The martyrs, including four clerics, were killed between 1603 and 1639 during Christian persecution by feudal shoguns, which lasted until 1867, when the emperor's authority was restored.

"The Cardinals' conference in the Vatican gave approval to the plan last month, making it 99 percent certain," Takami told AFP by telephone. "We have already started collecting donations around the country to prepare for the occasion."

The idea was first raised when the late Pope John Paul II made an unprecedented visit to Japan in 1981.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan has spent some 15 years researching the 188 candidates.

They include Julian Nakaura, part of a delegation sent to Rome who was later hanged upside down and killed in Nagasaki in 1633, and Peter Kibe, an underground Catholic preacher who was caught and tortured to death in 1639.

"The Pope's decision may have little impact on Japanese society as a whole, but will weigh much on our church's way of thinking and attitude," the archbishop said.

Manabu Kosasa, 67, a descendant of Nakaura, said: "Despite the ban, Julian Nakaura worked hard underground and offered his life for international exchanges. I feel proud that his endeavour is being repaid at long last."

So far, 42 people related to Japan have been canonised and 205 others beatified in this predominantly Buddhist and Shintoist nation.

There are around 1.9 million Christians in Japan, 1.5 percent of the population, and Roman Catholics number about 444,000.

The country's most celebrated saints are 26 martyrs, including four Spaniards, one Mexican and one Portuguese, who were killed in 1597 in Nagasaki, the cradle of Japanese Christianity, and canonised in 1862.