– Marco Carvalho
in Nagasaki
He joined the Society of Jesus with the same dream as Pope Francis, to be a missionary in Japan. Over the past 62 years, Spaniard Luis Fontes has assumed the mission of bringing the Word of God to the Japanese people. The Spanish priest, who claims to be a descendant of a brother of Saint Francis Xavier, became a naturalized Japanese citizen with the aim of proving that the Catholic Church is not in Japan “to create colonies of any kind.” It was as Ruiji Izumi, his Japanese name, that Luis Fontes spoke to O Clarim, moments after he was embraced by the Holy Father, during Francis’ visit to Nagasaki.
The message that Pope Francis brought to Nagasaki was a message of peace and a message of hope. But it was also a message about life, in a city known for death, destruction and martyrdom. How important was the message that His Holiness left the Catholics here in Nagasaki?
It was very important, if we have in mind that the invitation for him to come to Japan was made by the Government. The Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, visited the Vatican a few years ago and personally invited the Pope to come to Japan. The idea of peace in the world is an idea that the Japanese Government holds very dearly. Japan wants to be responsible for this movement but, of course, they cannot impose it on other countries. They were the ones that suffered with the atomic bombs, but there are other nations that don’t see Japan as a country of peace. When the Pope comes and speaks in the name of all Humanity, of mankind, and claims that peace in the world should be a priority for everybody, the message gains a lot more relevance. He is a man of peace and dialogue. He was the first Christian Pope to visit Abu Dhabi and the Arabian peninsula. That shows how much interest he has in putting together all religions, so that they can work for peace, not for war. On the other hand, coming to Japan for him was very important, because he, as you surely know, felt the call to join the Jesuits at 16 – like me – so he could come to Japan…
He didn’t come, nevertheless…
Well, he offered himself to serve in Japan, but he had a health problem. He had a problem in his lungs. The person who examined him was the former Superior of the Society of Jesus in Japan, father [Pedro] Arrupe. Father Arrupe was stationed outside Hiroshima when the atomic bomb exploded. When he met young Jorge Bergoglio, he told him: “Your medical record shows that you have only one useful lung. The other one stopped working.” In Japan, foreigners, if they are not careful, they can easily get a cold. In one same day, the weather changes very much. I have been living in Japan for sixty years and my skin still hasn’t gotten used to the weather. When I stay barefoot in the tatami in August, in the hot weather, I get a runny nose. That means that my system has not yet adapted to Japan. I get a cold very simply. I sleep with socks most of the days, because most of the time my feet get cold. My body is not yet used to this country.
How do you see the message that Pope Francis left at the Peace Park? Nagasaki was destroyed by the only plutonium bomb ever set off and the Pope spoke about the importance of disarmament and the non-proliferation of weapons. We live in strange times, because we see, on one hand, the nations professing the advantages of free trade, but on the other hand investing more and more money on the development of weapons. Can the message that Francis left in Nagasaki be a well needed game-changer?
The slogan the Vatican chose for the Pope’s visit to Japan was “Protect all Life”: taking care of life, all the aspects of life. This includes not only human life, but also natural life: nature, the Earth, the Amazonian forest. We recently had this meeting of bishops which was focused on the Amazon. The natural world, we should be able to take care of it. We are responsible for it. To me this was important. Christianity is not a private religion; it is a family religion for the whole mankind. He is the representative of a religion that wants to have peace in the world, so that our home can become a home for everybody. Francis works very strongly so that we can realize that. He has made a very big personal effort to convince both Governments and people to accept refugees and emigrants from other countries. We are talking about people that live in difficult conditions in war-stricken places and all that they want is to be somewhere where they can have peace. Some houses that belonged to the Vatican in Rome were empty and he ordered them to be prepared so that they could receive refugees. The human aspect of religion has changed very much, therefore peace is essential. Sometimes people ask me: “Why is Christianity necessary?” Because Christianity teaches that we are all brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters fight, but they don’t kill each other. At least, not everyday. There is a very important point in which the Pope has been quietly working. He has been taking care of the house where we live: the water, the atmosphere, the living conditions. He is stressing something very important that formally not many people spoke about, despite the fact that we are responsible for it: we are causing the destruction of the world, causing wars and forcing thousands of people to flee their countries.
Nagasaki is seen as the capital of Christianity in Japan. How strong is Catholicism in Southern Japan?
Well, I lived in Hiroshima for a few years too and my impression is that in Nagasaki the shadow of the atomic bomb is not felt as deeply as in Hiroshima. It’s true that the local Church doesn’t have many new faces, but I think that, despite the destruction, people always looked with hope to the future. That might be one of the reasons why they didn’t keep the remains and the relics of the churches destroyed. In Hiroshima people are still resentful, they still feel sad about the event. I had a classmate who died recently, Father Tadashi Hasegawa. He was a diocesan priest and once, when he was studying theology with me in the common courses that we had in Latin at that time, I noticed something. For the Japanese students, some of the topics – their own history and the History of the Church – they should be learned in their own language. We were almost two hundred at the Seminary, between foreign missionaries and native seminarians. He was sitting by my desk, it was the beginning of June and the weather was very hot, so we were wearing some lighter clothes and I noticed he had a big, bright sort of scar in his arm. That struck me as something strange and after the class I asked him: “Excuse me, did you have an accident or something of the kind?”.
It was a radiation burn, right? The atomic bomb…
Yes, the atomic bomb. When the bomb exploded, he was a Middle School student but he was working during the summer in a factory where weapons were built. In the first few hours of that tragic 6th of August the sirens sounded so many times, that the people in charge of the factory decided: “Today there’s no work.” It was a hot day, so he went to the river to swim. The river in Hiroshima is lower than the level of the surrounding areas. In the moment he was entering the water, only with a hand out, the atomic bomb exploded. He also got burned in one leg and in both places he had keloids. I remember that, back then, I asked him: “Could you explain it to me?” and he only said: “Well, its a sad memory.” We conducted interviews with the survivors that were in the area where the atomic bomb was dropped and he explained how everything happened. He said he was there, he left the water, felt strange, lost consciousness and when he opened his eyes he saw dead people and dead fish and so on. When he left the river, he noticed that the city had disappeared. All the wooden houses had burned. He felt that the providence of God was at work. Most people escaping from the fire and the heat, they went to the seaside where there was nothing but people with burns and dirty, contaminated water. He saw another group taking refuge behind a hill and he joined them. Father Arrupe was there with help. Providentially, the house where father Arrupe was living – and I lived there for two years – was behind the hill and was spared the heat wave. The heat has stopped there, the glasses were shattered, but the house remained in its feet. The chapel had a tatami cover all over the floor and he ordered the people to sleep there. At one point, there were two hundred people sleeping there. He saved two hundred people. Providentially, Father Arrupe discovered that the olive oil that he used to cook had some sort of effects on the radiation burns and he made some cream to cover the burns so that they wouldn’t get infectious. He saved two hundred people like this.
Father Hasegawa was one of them…
An Australian doctor that came to Hiroshima a few days after the bomb exploded, when he saw Tadashi Hasegawa, he told Father Arrupe: “This boy has no hope. He is too badly injured. Let him die.” Father Arrupe said, “No”. The boy recovered. He was unconscious several times. And when he was not, Father Arrupe used to tell him that he shouldn’t be afraid of dying, because if he did, God would make sure he would be reunited with all of his friends, because God was also his friend. He remembered Father Arrupe’s words and when he recovered he came to him and he told him: “I want to know more about this God which is my friend.” He joined the Seminary and after a few months there he took a resolution: “I want to become a priest to tell people that Providence doesn’t want any more wars.” And that was how he became not only a Catholic, but also a priest.
You have been living in Japan for the last sixty years and with you there’s a sort of return of Saint Francis Xavier to Japan. You still have his family blood on your veins. How did that weight on your decision to become a missionary in Japan?
It’s very simple. See, the first notice of Japan was brought to Francis Xavier by a young man called Anjiro. Also known as Paul of the Holy Faith, Anjiro learned Portuguese quickly, became a Christian and he invited Francis Xavier to Japan. He said that the people in Japan were hungry of God and they were ready to receive the word of Christ. At that time, there was no rule to make Buddhism or Shintoism the official religion. There was freedom. So, we went to preach the faith in Japan, he was convinced that Christianity could take root there and it was then that he wrote that famous letter to his friend, the advisor to the King of Portugal, Simão Rodrigues telling him: “Tell the king of Spain and the king of Portugal that they have no right to make a colony out of Japan. They have a culture of their own and the only thing they are lacking is Christianity.” After spending ten years in India, with all those gods, costumes and religions, it was refreshing to get to a place where there were no religions allowing people to have three wives and something of the kind. Japan showed Francis Xavier great possibilities and when he wrote that letter to the king of Portugal he felt he was doing the right thing. And that was why I took the Japanese nationality: to prove that we are not in Japan to create colonies of any kind. It’s very important.
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