Pope Francis: Apostolic Journey to Japan

by: Radio Veritas Asia , Oct 02 2019 - 3:21pm

Pope Francis will travel to Japan as apostolic journey on 23 to 26 November, 2019.

The theme of the Apostolic Journey to Japan highlights the protection of life and Creation, and is cited from a phase in “A prayer for our earth” at the end of the Pope’s Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, on caring for our common home. In that document, the Pope exhorts us to esteem not only the dignity of each person but also the environment.

He will be the second Pope to visit Japan, one of the Asian countries, after Pope John Paul II.

It will be also the 32nd apostolic journey of his pontificate and his fourth to Asia, after South Korea in 2014, Sri Lanka and the Philippines the following year, and Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2017.

He will visit particularly the cities of Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima and pay tribute to the Japanese martyrs.

The Jesuits sowed the seeds of Christianity in Japan through St. Francis Xavier’s missionary effort. Xavier was one of the founding members of the Society of Jesus along with St. Ignatius of Loyola. Xavier and the Jesuits arrived there in 1549 and established several Jesuit communities. A steady stream of Jesuits, mainly Portuguese, continued to land in the country through the 1570s.

As a young Jesuit, Pope Francis had dream of working as a missionary in the country, but was unable to achieve it due to health reasons after a part of his lungs was removed due to a serious infection when he was a teenager.

23-26 November will mark the historical days of Pope Francis’ apostolic visit to Japan where he as a young Jesuit could not realize his dream of working as a missionary.