Story
A son of Normandy
Marc Marie de Rotz was born on 27 March 1840 at the château of Vaux, at Vaux-sur-Aure near Bayeux in Calvados.His obituary in the archives of the Paris Foreign Missions describes a family that was "the providence of the whole district," and parents who raised their children in a Christian life of "simplicity and charity, far from the world and its agitations." His father farmed the large estate himself and meant to leave it to his eldest son.As a boy Marc was placed in the care of the Abbé Dupanloup, with whom he often spent his holidays, and he kept a grateful memory of him all his life.
Already tonsured, he entered the seminary of the Missions Étrangères in the rue du Bac on 23 September 1862. Illness sent him home after a year and a half, but he had shown there a tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin and a striking gift for practical work: it was he who directed the building of the first oratory of Notre-Dame des Partants in the seminary garden.He was ordained priest at Bayeux on 29 June 1865 and became curate of Saint-Julien at Caen, where the parish priest gave him the care of the servants and the poor.When he left for the missions, a servant gave him her whole savings, 500 francs, for the works in Japan. When he begged her to keep it for her old age, she answered, "What, is the hospital made for dogs?" He accepted, and never forgot her.
The bishop's lithographer
Bishop , vicar apostolic of Japan, had come to France for the needs of his mission. Three years earlier, at , the of had made themselves known, and Petitjean wanted a lithographer who could print the books his new flock could no longer do without.De Rotz was suggested to him. He was assigned to Japan and sailed with his bishop on 15 April 1868 aboard the Impératrice of the Messageries Maritimes.
Japan was still under the ban. As soon as he reached , de Rotz set up his lithographic presses, trained helpers and went to work.The prefecture's heritage site and the Kodansha dictionary both remember him for this first task: printing catechisms and religious books by lithograph at Ōura.He also served the hidden flock in quieter ways. Christians came to the bishop's house only after dark and left before dawn. De Rotz turned the attic of the house into a temporary chapel, where for a time the men could hear Mass and receive the sacraments unseen. But in spite of every precaution the persecution broke out, and the Christians of Urakami were sent into exile.
In 1871 Petitjean moved his residence to Yokohama and took de Rotz with him, first to fit out a dormitory in the attic for seminarians just back from the college at Penang.Then he built. The Sisters of Saint-Maur, brought from Singapore to teach European girls, needed a house. It seemed unwise to use Japanese labour, so the work went to Chinese builders under de Rotz, who drew the plans with help from the French engineers of the Yokosuka arsenal. He had a huge wagon made and drove it up the Yokohama bluff himself, in a blue smock with a whip in his hand, behind four horses harnessed in the Norman style.Carter, carpenter and mason by turns, he saw the building through. Every Saturday the arsenal launch took him to Yokosuka, where he was chaplain to the Europeans, and brought him back on Sunday night or Monday morning.
1874: nurse to Urakami
In 1873 the edicts were withdrawn and the exiles came home. De Rotz returned to Nagasaki to print prayer books, now more needed than ever, and every year he published a calendar for the faithful.The returning Christians were worn out by exile and most were destitute. In 1874 dysentery broke out among them, and smallpox followed.
De Rotz asked his bishop for leave to become their nurse and doctor. He obtained medicines and took as his nurses the Japanese religious women whom Bishop had begun to direct, the community that would become the "Amantes de la Croix."He taught them to recognise the diseases, to care for the sick and to give the right remedies. Every day after a frugal breakfast he went out to Urakami to the bedsides of the sick and stayed until evening.Among his helpers was Iwanaga Maki, newly returned from exile, whose community went on to raise orphans and became the Urakami Jūjikai.After the epidemic he sent to France for a complete pharmacy so that he could do still more for the sick.
The seminary at Ōura
He had begun building a seminary at the end of 1873, and he finished it in October 1875. He used, he said, only chosen materials, and he guaranteed its soundness.This is the Latin seminary that still stands beside Ōura Church, built to train Japanese priests.The obituary notes that in all his undertakings he wanted his work to last, and that experience proved this a true economy.In 1875 the seminary had only five students with a single class in the evening. While full courses waited until October 1877, de Rotz set up his presses in one of its rooms and printed books, large pictures of the Virgin and of Saint Joseph, and the Stations of the Cross. He bought a complete printing plant and became expert with the machines.
He thought he had found his life's work. But printing houses had multiplied in Japan, with skilled typesetters and modest prices, and the vicar apostolic judged that the mission no longer needed its own press.
Sotome
In 1879 de Rotz was sent to head the district of , on the coast north of Nagasaki, among the descendants of the hidden Christians.The change unsettled him for a moment, his obituary says, but he soon recovered and made his home at Shitsu, where a Christian family took him in until he could build a church and a presbytery.The prefecture says that he was shocked by the poverty of the people and gave to Sotome all the fortune he had inherited from his family in France.
In 1882 he built Shitsu Church to his own design.He kept the roof low against the strong winds from the sea; enlargements in 1891 and 1909 gave it its long, low outline.He wanted a sung liturgy in his church, and he gave his people singing lessons until he coughed blood. "Instead of using my voice," he wrote, "I am reduced to whistling the Kyrie and the Gloria." He went on teaching and got the liturgy he wanted.Later he rebuilt the church in brick, gave it a fine bell, and set a large statue of Our Lady of Lourdes on top of the tower.
In 1880 his close friend Father Salmon joined him and stayed seven years, taking much of the confessional while de Rotz kept the outward administration and the visiting of the sick.
The Aid Centre
His most famous work was for the women of Sotome. In 1883 he built the Shitsu Aid Centre, a workshop to help the village women support themselves. It had a main workroom, a macaroni factory and a sardine-net works, and the women milled flour and made noodles and other goods for sale.He imported tools for building and farming and taught people to use them, with drawings to explain.His obituary adds that he installed looms, had land cleared for European-style farming, and taught every trade a woman might need.He placed the workshop under Saint Joseph. Its members were to honour the Child Jesus, who had worked under his foster father, and to imitate his love of work, his poverty and his compassion. They took no vows and could leave when they wished, but all were bound to manual work according to their strength. To secure its future he made an endowment whose amount only the vicar apostolic knew.
He built in stone as well as brick. In 1893 he raised a chapel at Ōno, up the coast, for twenty-six Christian households, using local stone set in a mortar of red earth and lime. That method is still called the "de Rotz wall."The prefecture notes that stone walling was a traditional Sotome technique that he adapted.The prefecture's heritage pages also record that the master carpenter learned church building from de Rotz and Father Pelu.
The pastor
Obedience more than taste had kept him at practical work, and he knew his Japanese was weak. Left alone with a Japanese priest after 1887, he set out to remedy it, spending whole days on his sermons and catechisms and having them corrected; he left notebooks of instructions and first communion retreats.He slept Japanese style without sheets, out of love of poverty, but always had sheets for his guests. He ate little and seldom at fixed hours. His confrères remembered a delightful storyteller who loved the Church and the Pope, and who helped missionaries in need so discreetly that some never knew who had helped them.
A good death
In January 1911 he fell gravely ill at Shitsu. He wrote in his private notebook: "My God, I abandon to you my life, my health, my honour: do in me and with me whatever pleases you." He received the last rites on 25 January, but recovered enough by spring to work again, and in September he nursed Bishop Cousin in his last illness.On his bishop's advice he handed his parish to his assistant and moved to Nagasaki, where, ill as he was, he directed the building of a better residence for the bishop and visiting priests.
He died at Nagasaki on 7 November 1914, after a night of great suffering, while the prayers for the dying were said beside him.His body was carried back to Shitsu and laid in the tomb he had prepared for himself beside the cemetery cross.The Kodansha dictionary records a line he wrote in romanised Japanese before his death, a lament that the bird returns to its home but he would not return to his.Today Shitsu Church, the Aid Centre and Ōno Church are part of the listing of the Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region, and the sisters at the Aid Centre still play the organ he sent for from France.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- "Motobari." The obituary names the nursing sisters as the "religieuses indigènes de Motobari." This is probably Motohara in Urakami, but the identification is Unverified.