Watching for an opening, 1847 to 1850
Pope Pius IX (ピウス9世) first dealt with the Japan mission while Japan was still closed to missionaries.On September 25, 1847, Théodore Forcade (フォルカード), who held the vicariate of Japan, reached Rome and was received by the pope.Propaganda feared that the opening of Japan would be long delayed, so it made the missionary pro-prefect apostolic of Hong Kong, a post from which he could watch events while keeping the Japan vicariate.
In November 1850 Forcade conceived a bold plan.He would land at night from a whaling ship near Edo (江戸), walk openly to the nearest houses in a violet cassock and pectoral cross, and ask to be taken to the "Emperor".He put it to Cardinal Fransoni and enclosed a Latin letter to Pius IX, dated November 24, 1850, asking the pope to command or forbid it.Rome did not approve, and within a month it relieved him of the Hong Kong prefecture.
Canonizing the Twenty-Six Martyrs, 1862
Pius IX completed the cause of the Twenty-Six Martyrs, who had been crucified at Nagasaki (長崎) on February 5, 1597.The group was made up of six Franciscans, three Japanese Jesuits and lay helpers, and Urban VIII had beatified them in 1627.Before 1862 they were already called Saints in the acts of the Congregation of Rites, and their day stood in the Roman Martyrology, so only the formal canonization remained.
On September 3, 1861, the pope decreed that the canonization of the twenty-three Franciscan martyrs could safely proceed.The Jesuits had not planned to press the cause of their three, but they changed their minds and petitioned him, and he ordered the Congregation of Rites to act.On March 25, 1862, the feast of the Annunciation, he pronounced the "Tuto" for the three Jesuits after Mass at Santa Maria sopra Minerva.His decree described Paul Miki (三木パウロ) as a man of noble parents who spread the faith by writing and preaching.It said that John de Goto taught the people and that James Kisai meditated daily on the Passion.
The canonization took place in St Peter's on Pentecost, June 8, 1862.Pius IX had invited all the patriarchs and bishops to Rome, and some three hundred bishops and several thousand priests surrounded him.With the Japanese martyrs he also canonized the Trinitarian Michael de Sanctis.At the moment of the proclamation, "kneeling, he was the first to invoke the new Saints" (translated).Silver trumpets sounded from the dome, the cannon of Castel Sant'Angelo fired, and all the bells of Rome rang.Mexican families present called on Felipe de Jesús, the Mexican protomartyr among the Twenty-Six, to pray for Mexico.
First fruits of a new Christianity, 1863 to 1866
In the years after the canonization, the first signs of a new Japanese Church reached the pope.On Holy Saturday 1863 a young Japanese catechumen brought to Rome by Fr Girard (ジラール) received baptism, Eucharist and confirmation from the Cardinal Vicar.He was then presented to Pius IX, who blessed him as the first fruits of the new Japanese Christianity.
Early in 1864 Girard came to Nagasaki and climbed the martyrs' hill.On January 23, 1864, the missionary wrote to the pope asking that the 52 martyrs of 1622 receive the same honours just given to the Twenty-Six.
The new church at Ōura (大浦), built by Fr Bernard Petitjean (プティジャン) and opened in 1865, was dedicated to the Twenty-Six Martyrs whom Pius IX had canonized.On October 31, 1865, in the Gesù in Rome, the pope blessed six bronze statues of the Virgin and Child, cast as supposed copies of a picture linked with Francis Xavier.One of them was later given to the first church in Kyoto (京都), in 1890.
After the discovery of the hidden Christians, Pius IX instituted a feast, "The Finding of the Christians", kept every March 17 in the Catholic churches of Japan.In 1866 he named Petitjean the first Vicar Apostolic of Japan.The re-establishment of the Japan mission in 1866 was handled by Cardinal Alessandro Barnabò, the Prefect of Propaganda, whom the pope had made a cardinal in 1856 by tricking him into accepting a parcel with the insignia.
The beatification of 205 martyrs, 1867
The canonization of 1862 revived a much older cause, that of the martyrs of 1617 to 1632.In the seventeenth century this cause had come so close to its end that the Spinola family prepared a marble chapel in Genoa for their Blessed relative, but then it was abandoned for nearly two centuries.The postulators of the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and Jesuits asked Pius IX to reopen it.His Brief says he was moved by the orders and by the vicars apostolic of the lands near Japan, just as Japan was opening again to missionaries.
In December 1866 the pope announced that in July 1867 he would beatify a large number of Japanese martyrs, at the time of the eighteenth centenary of St Peter's death.On February 26, 1867, in the great hall of the Collegio Romano, he published the decree that their martyrdom was proved and that four miracles were approved.He chose the feast of St Catherine of Siena to give leave to proceed, because so many Japanese women martyrs had been Dominican Tertiaries following her example.The decree that the beatification could safely proceed was published in the Biblioteca Angelica on April 30, 1867.
On July 7, 1867, Pius IX declared Blessed 205 martyrs of Japan who died between May 22, 1617, and September 3, 1632, from every social rank and from all four orders.His decree spoke of priests with their catechists, nobles of royal blood, wealthy matrons, young virgins, old men and children of three and four.His Brief put it simply: "From 1617 to 1632 Japan was fruitful in martyrs".Among the leaders it named were Alfonso Navarrete, Carlo Spinola, Francisco Pacheco and Lucía de Freitas.Of the 205, 166 came from Nagasaki, and the discovery of the Urakami Christians encouraged the step.The missionaries hoped the beatification would bring tolerance, but persecution followed instead.
Letters from Urakami, 1867 to 1868
On August 29, 1867, the Christians of Urakami (浦上) wrote to Pius IX asking for his prayers and, if the prisoners were to die, for the grace of sharing their prison.Their letter said the Christian families of the village numbered about seven hundred.Athanase, whose Japanese name was Abe Shinzō (阿部真造), taught the Nagasaki seminarians and also wrote to the pope in 1867.
Petitjean reached Rome on January 3, 1868, and the pope received him in private audience two days after Epiphany.He greeted the bishop with the words "Come, come, caro mio, who have found again our children of Japan" (translated).In memory of the discovery he granted the church of the Twenty-Six Martyrs at Ōura a daily plenary indulgence in perpetuity, for the living and the dead.He also gave Petitjean a ring and medals of the centenary of Sts Peter and Paul.
The pope's reply to the Urakami Christians, the seminarians and Athanase was dated at St Peter's on January 8, 1868, before news of the apostasies reached Rome.In it he approved the plan to prepare a native clergy at once.He wrote that these faithful, who had kept the faith of their fathers, showed an admirable image of the spirit of the early Church.Pius IX prayed that through Mary Immaculate and the Saints who had watered Japan with their blood, God would remove the obstacles to the Gospel.
Peace after three centuries, 1871 to 1873
In his later years Pius IX kept up a warm exchange of letters with the Japanese Church.Petitjean returned to Japan only in mid-December 1870, having been advised by the pope and Cardinal Barnabò to wait.On June 18, 1871, the bishop celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the pontificate in the Sacred Heart church at Yokohama (横浜) and sent an address to Rome.
The pope replied on September 28, 1871.He called it marvellous that, with the priests wiped out and the country closed for so long, the faith had been carefully handed down from ancestors to descendants.In January 1872 his letter was printed in a Japanese summary on a woodblock sheet, together with a letter from Petitjean to the Japanese Christians.
On May 29, 1873, after the release of the exiled Christians, Pius IX wrote again to the bishop.While the Church was persecuted in the West, he said, it was a consolation that in the Far East "it enjoys at last, after three centuries, some tranquillity among the infidels" (translated).On Trinity Sunday 1873, the day of thanksgiving set by Petitjean, seventeen Japanese Christians signed a letter to the pope.They said that events had confirmed his words of two years before, which they called in some way prophetic.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- The date of the canonization. most sources give June 8, 1862, but Cary dates it to June 6, 1862, and counts some 250 prelates rather than about 300.
- The number canonized. Kenners says Pius IX enrolled "twenty-four" saints, apparently counting the 23 Franciscans and Michael de Sanctis and leaving out the three Jesuits; other sources give the 26 Martyrs and one confessor.
- The size of the crowd at the Te Deum. the Mexican translator of Boero gives 40,000 voices, while the eyewitness Rigaud estimates 50,000.
- The earlier beatification of the 26. it is usually dated 1627, but Wilberforce gives 1629 for all of them, Peña gives 1629 for the three Jesuits, and Marnas gives 1627 to 1629.Caddell, writing in 1856, says Urban VIII canonised them, although Urban VIII beatified them and the canonization came only in 1862.
- The date of the 1867 beatification. most sources give July 7, 1867, but Kataoka speaks of a brief of May 7, 1867.
- The span of the 205 martyrs. the Brief gives 1617 to 1632, but Tronu, citing the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan, gives martyrs killed between 1597 and 1637, and Stober treats 205 as the total number martyred in the early 1600s, though the dead ran to thousands.
- The first two names on the list of the 205. Wilberforce dates the beheading of Pedro de la Asunción and Juan Bautista Machado to May 2, 1617; the standard date is May 22, 1617.
- The 1863 baptism in Rome. Girard's letter describing it is printed with the date March 1, 1863, which falls before Holy Week that year, and Cary places the event on Good Friday rather than Holy Saturday.
- A print in a 1925 Japanese book says a pope blessed a Madonna engraving that Petitjean brought from Manila and hung at Ōura, but its caption calls him "Pius VIII"; the pope of Petitjean's day was Pius IX.
- Early news of the discovery. in February 1866 a French Catholic paper reported that a missionary had given Pius IX 600 francs as the Japanese Christians' first Peter's Pence with a request for a vicar apostolic; Petitjean was dismayed, and Marnas calls the report largely erroneous.