1364 Third volume of Cimatti letters published in Japanese
austraLasia 1364

Third volume of letters of Don Cimatti published - in Japanese

TOKYO: 22nd December 2005 -- It is a known fact that there are more letters of Don Cimatti's preserved than there have been of Don Bosco.  Some 4,000 of Don Bosco's letters are in the archives. The most recent inventory of letters belonging to Don Cimatti (listed in summer 2005) runs to just over 6,000.  A good number of the originals or copies of same have been kept and catologued in the Cimati Museum, at Chofu, Tokyo.  At the UPS, Rome, under the direction of Fr Semeraro, the grand effort is well underway to transfer all of these to digital form for publication.
    Meanwhile, the curator of the Cimatti Museum and vice postulator for the Cause, Fr Gaetano Compri, has been translating these letters into Japanese.  Fr Compri has been 50 years a missionary in Japan, seven of which were lived under the direction of Don Cimatti himself.  Yesterday, volume three of the translated letters was published, all 34o pages it.  Don Cimatti's written style, at times flowery, but frank and full of sentiment, is not so easy to render in a language like Japanese, and yet those who have read it have said that it expresses the warmth and heart of a saintly person.  Volume One contains letters from 1926, the year Don Cimatti devoted to study of the Japanese language and his first encounter with Japan.  Volume Two contains letters from 1927 to the early months of 1929 when Don Cimatti was parish priest in Miyazaki.  Now Volume Three takes up from 1929 to 1931, which includes Cimatti's visit to Italy for the Beatification of Don Bosco, and for the General Chapter, then his return with the first group of clerics and with the first group of Salesian Sisters, as well as his formation activity during the time of the Great Depression.
    Clearly, then, an abundant selection of letters has been translated.  It would not be possible nor opportune to translate them all.

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