Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Tokyo (Fides Service ) – The Church in Japan is ever more committed to mission ad gentes: recently five lay missionaries aged between 26 and 62 set out for mission in Russia, Cambodia, East Timor and Palau. After a seven month period of formation the five missionaries will work in places where besides proclaiming the good news of the Gospel, they will promote development of the local people. According to the Japanese Bishops’ Conference the present moment is a time of joy and hope because although small, “the Church in Japan is able to look towards mission and devote its energies to carrying the Gospel to the world” .
Two of the missionaries, lay women, Ms Higashimoru Yoshie aged 47 and Ms Taira Nishiki, aged 30 set out from Kagoshima for mission in Cambodia. Ms Yoshie will be involved in health care Battambang and with children. Ms Nishiki, a physiotherapist, will work as a volunteer at a hospital run by the Japan Lay Mission Movement in Cambodia.
A third lay woman missionary Ms Imai Kei, aged 27 from Tokyo, left Japan for Khabarovsk, in Siberia, to work with the Visitation Sisters who care for prostitutes, street children and the homeless. This Japanese Order of women religious is dedicated to assisting ethnic minorities in Siberia.
The fourth woman missionary Ms Yamate Masako, aged 62 from Fukuoka who has worked in Japan with the disabled, decided to go on mission to the South Pacific Island of Palau to assist people with physical, psychological and spiritual traumas caused by poverty or as a result of the tragedy of World War II.
The only man in the group of five 26 year old Caritas Japan volunteer Kondo Makoto, has gone to East Timor with NGO AFMET. Deeply moved by participation in World Youth Day 2000 in Rome, Kondo felt called to mission.
Japan, reached by Christianity in the 16th century by Saint Francis Xavier, today needs to be re-evangelised. Catholics in Japan, about 500,000 in a population of 126 million, live their faith deeply rooted in the national culture and they are active in the social, political and cultural life of their country.
(PA) (Fides Service 17/12/2003 lines 35 words 404)
