Francesco in Tokyo: announces call for nuclear disarmament and does not talk about the Hong Kong crisis

Vatican

Bangkok, the Pope: "Children exposed to prostitution are disfigured in their dignity"

by our correspondent PAOLO RODARI

Bergoglio says that as a young priest he wanted to leave as a missionary for Japan. An illness forced him to desist: "I don't know if you know – he says -, but since I was young I felt sympathy and affection for these lands. Many years have passed since that missionary impulse, whose realization was long in coming. Today the Lord offers me the opportunity to be among you as a missionary pilgrim in the footsteps of great witnesses to the faith ".St. Francis Xavier arrived in Japan 470 years ago, it was the beginning "of the spread of Christianity in this land". Then many facts, the vicissitudes of the martyrs Saint Paul Miki and his companions and the blessed Justo Takayama Ukon, "who in the midst of many trials gave testimony to the death" But there were also the "hidden Christians" of the Nagasaki region, "who have kept their faith for generations thanks to baptism, prayer and catechesis". "Authentic domestic Churches – says the Pope – that shone in this land, perhaps without knowing it, like mirrors of the Family of Nazareth".

Vatican

Thailand, the Pope to the bishops: "We, chosen as servants and not as masters"

by our correspondent PAOLO RODARI

The journey of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is marked by the motto "Protect every life". The mission in these lands, moreover, "has been characterized by a strong search for inculturation and dialogue, which has allowed the formation of new modes independent of those developed in Europe". For the Pope, protecting every life and proclaiming the Gospel "are not two separate or opposing things: they call and demand each other".

The life of Japanese citizens, like Catholics present, is marked by various scourges that threaten it. There are people "marked, for various reasons, by loneliness, despair and isolation". In a hyper-organized and technological society city, human relationships are often lacking so that the whirlwinds of desperation suck in more and more people. The Pope says: "The increase in the number of suicides in your cities, as well as bullying (ijime) and various forms of self-need, are creating new types of alienation and spiritual disorientation". All of this affects young people above all, which is why the Pope asks them to "pay particular attention to them and their needs, to try to create spaces in which the culture of efficiency, performance and success can open up to the culture of a gratuitous love and altruistic, able to offer everyone, and not only those 'arrived', the possibility of a happy and successful life ".

Vatican

The Pope in Bangkok, meeting with the Prime Minister: "The migration crisis cannot be ignored"

by our correspondent PAOLO RODARI

The bishops greet the Pope by the voice of Monsignor Joseph Mitsuaki Takami, archbishop of Nagasaki and president of the Bishops' Conference of the country. He returns to the subject of nuclear disasters: "" Japan – he says – strives to build peace with its neighbors. Japan, the only country in which the atomic bombs were dropped in the war, asks (invokes) that this disaster will never happen again. We want you to appeal to the whole world so that humanity can do without nuclear weapons ".

<! –

->

<! –

->