1232 Japan's Salesians push forward with cultural outreach\n
Subject: austraLasia #1232
From: Julian Fox
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 08:01:56 +0200
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
austraLasia 1232
Japan's Salesians push forward with cultural outreach
TOKYO: 27th August -- This time working with
Japanese-Filipino youth, the Salesians have justs completed a four day
summer camp for 34 participants. The summer bi or multi cultural camps
were the brainchild of Fr John Sakai, a Japanese Salesian fully fluent
in English (studied theology in Manila) with his theology classmates
and student leaders from Himonya parish and Chofu. The bi-cultural
camps were set up in cooperation with the Catholic Tokyo International
Centre (CTIC), the archdiocesan pastoral and crisis centre for
foreigners, and the Japanese-Filipino Youth Educational Program (JFYEP)
of Kasai Church.
Armed with such impressive acronyms, the CTIC-JFYEP-SDB venture has
been a great success! This year they set out to form youth leaders as
an important strategy for the future. The idea is to to bring these
young leaders onside in the difficult but important task of catechesis
for youngsters who are conversant with Japanese but often forgetful or
plain ignorant of English, Tagalog and the like. The problem begins
when the youngsters accompany their parents to liturgies in those
languages and are bored stiff by the experience. The other result is
that because they attend Sunday Mass with their parents, they miss out
on the regular Japanese Sunday school classes.
Multiculturalism is a fine banner in modern democratic societies,
but underneath, as most societies know, the not-fully-x kids always get
a hard time from their peers. It is no different for children of
Filipino, Brazilian, Vietnamese.... parentage in Japan. The hope is
that the newly formed youth leaders can help ease this situation in a
variety of ways, and perhaps even conduct an oratory-type situation at
weekends.
There are now six Salesians in the Province working officially and
full-time in the multicultural apostolate, a move that was reinforced
at the last Provincial Chapter: Fr Evaristo Higa for Brazilians or for
Nikeeis from Brazil, Fr Angelo Yamamouchi for Spanish-speaking
migrants, Fr Michael Lap for Vietnamese, Fr Umberto Cavaliere for South
Americans generally, Fr Nagasawa, as a parish priest for both Japanese
and non-Japanese in his parish. Fr Bob Zarate has recently joined the
CTIC as a staffer specifically for youth-oriented situations and cases.
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