Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

The reunion of the hidden Christians of Nagasaki

Nagasaki (Japan) (1865)

El cristianismo había llegado a Japón con san Francisco Javier en 1549 y floreció especialmente en Kyūshū. Pero a comienzos del siglo XVII el shogunato lo prohibió, expulsó a los misioneros y persiguió con dureza a los fieles. Entre ellos están los veintiséis mártires crucificados en Nagasaki en 1597. A partir de entonces el cristianismo desapareció de la vida pública, y quienes perseveraron pasaron a la clandestinidad: son los kakure kirishitan, los cristianos ocultos.

En 1864 se levantó en Nagasaki la Iglesia de Ōura, dedicada a aquellos veintiséis mártires, y llegó como capellán el padre francés Bernard Petitjean. El 17 de marzo de 1865 un grupo de campesinos del área de Urakami se acercó con cautela al templo. Lo que ocurrió allí está documentado en la historiografía sobre los sitios de cristianos ocultos de Nagasaki: aquellas personas revelaron al sacerdote que habían mantenido la fe cristiana en secreto durante generaciones, cuando todos creían que ya no quedaba ni un cristiano en Japón.

Catholic tradition has preserved the scene with tenderness: a woman, after assuring herself that the priest was celibate and recognized the Pope, whispered to him that their hearts were one and the same and asked him if he venerated the Holy Mary. The exact literary form of the dialogue belongs to later missionary tradition, as no contemporary verbatim transcription exists; but the historical core is solid: devotion to Mary was the criterion for recognizing each other as brothers and sisters in faith.

After that day, thousands of hidden Christians began to emerge from their villages. It is estimated that in the Nagasaki region alone, there were nearly ten thousand. The persecution continued for several more years, with banishments and punishments, until the prohibition was lifted at the end of the 19th century. Local Catholic memory interprets this as the devotion to Mary and the prayers learned from the early missionaries sustaining the faith without priests for more than two centuries: a pious interpretation, but consistent with the central role Mary played in those communities. It is worth noting that isolation led to adaptations and highly distorted forms of prayer; there is no evidence that all of them preserved the Rosary as we pray it today, although it is likely that many maintained a repetitive, Rosary-like prayer.