At 11 am local time, the 16th of July 2018, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Tamatsukuri Church) in Japan, Fr Josep Maria Abella Batlle, CMF and Fr. Paul Toshihiro Sakai of the Opus Dei, were both consecrated to the Order of the Episcopate by His Eminence Thomas Aquinas Cardinal Manyo Maeda, Archbishop of Osaka. Both are being installed as Auxiliary Bishops of the said Archdiocese. (Photos by Ivan Leong)
On June 4, 2018, Pope Francis has appointed a new bishop for Saitama Diocese and two auxiliary bishops for Osaka Archdiocese in Japan. All three bishops-elect have lived in Spanish-speaking countries.
Claretian Father Josep Maria Abella Batlle, 68, and Opus Dei Father Toshihiro Sakai, 58, were named as auxiliary bishops of Osaka Archdiocese. Osaka Archbishop Manyo Maeda will become a cardinal at a consistory on June 28.
Father Mario Michiaki Yamanouchi, 62, was appointed bishop of Saitama. He was born to a Catholic family in Japan’s Oita Prefecture in 1955. When he was 8 years old, his family emigrated to Argentina to raise their children in a Catholic country. He was ordained a priest at 29 and has worked in Japan since 1997. Since 2014, he has been the provincial of the Salesians in Japan.
Father Abella is the pastor of Osaka’s St. Mary’s Cathedral. The Spanish missionary arrived in Japan in 1973 and was ordained a priest in 1975. He had served as Claretian provincial from 1981-92 and as superior general of the Claretian Missionaries from 2003-15.
Father Abella, who received the appointment to this office from Pope Francis on the 2nd of June, is the first Titular Bishop of the See of Methamaucum or Malamocco in Italian, a Titular See recently established on February 2018.
Father Sakai, secretary-general of the Prelature of Opus Dei in Japan, was born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1960 and entered an Opus Dei seminary in Spain in 1985. He has worked in Nagasaki Archdiocese, where he and Cardinal-designate Maeda, a Nagasaki diocesan priest, became friends.
Father Sakai is a member of the Osaka Archdiocesan Committee for Liturgy. He is also a master of the short Japanese haiku poetic form, as is Cardinal-designate Maeda.
The Archdiocese of Osaka has about 50,000 Catholics.
Follow
