austraLasia #2823 Japanese youth respond generously in current crisis
SENDAI: 19 March 2011 -- There are no Salesian
communities in Sendai, in the area worst hit by the
earthquake and tsunami that has cost thousands of lives in
northern Japan, but there is a strong Salesian
connection. Bishop Mizobe sdb was Bishop of Sendai
from 2000 until 2004. On 16 March, the Japanese
Bishops gathered in Sendai as a sign of their solidarity
with the people. They did more - they set up an emergency
centre in the city to coordinate humanitarian aid operations
that are being led by Caritas Japan. It is through
this agency that the Salesian presence, which is in areas
beginning with Tokyo, then on towards the south of the
country, are working to support the humanitarian
situation. One thing that has given great consolation
to the Church is the number of Japanese youth who have come
forward to help, according to the Executive Director of
Caritas, Fr Daisuke Narui: "Young people are continually
coming to Caritas from all the dioceses to offer their
availability as volunteers to bring aid to the areas most
affected by the disaster. This is an important sign that
gives us hope for the future".
While the Church in general in Japan is
still struggling to come to terms with the disaster, the
Diocese of Sendai has particular reason for concerns,
obviously. There is still to be an accurate account of loss
of life of Church personnel, for instance. A Canadian
missionary, Fr Andre Lachapelle, of the Quebec Foreign
Mission, was found dead in his car, which was swept away by
the Tsunami. He had been en route to his parish in Shiogama.
And names of places that were once unknown by the world at
large, but are now 'household' names, like Miyagi,
Fukushima, Iwate, Aomori, were important local centres for
the diocese. Most of them either do not exist, totally
destroyed by the tsunami, or have had to be abandoned
because of the nuclear disaster that followed at Fukushima.
Catholics make up 0.15% of the population
of the Prefecture that is covered by Sendai Diocese (this
compares to something like 0.95% for Tokyo). There are some
11,000 Catholics in the Diocese who were in 56 parishes
before the earthquake and tsunami struck. It remains to be
seen how many of those parishes have effectively survived.
Just as it has been difficult for
Japanese people to get news of the real situation in the
country (Bishop Hiraga of Sendai has said that many
residents of his diocese have little knowledge of what is
going on at Fukushima because communications are so poor),
it has been even more difficult to get accurate accounts of
the situation for Catholics in the region. Lack of
information is always frustrating, especially for agencies
and NGOs that wish to help.
Bishop Mizobe, incidentally, is now
Bishop of Takamatsu, the second but last of the major
islands, in southernmost terms, in the Japanese island
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