Asia – Pacific

Harrisburg, Pa., Dec 2, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The Pennsylvania Senate is debating a bill that would require the burial or cremation of human remains after miscarriage or abortion.

HB 1890, the Final Disposition of Fetal Remains Act, was passed by the state House Nov. 18 by a vote of 123 to 76. It would require health care facilities to bury or cremate fetal remains not claimed by the child’s parents.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Frank Ryan, R-Lebanon, said that “we wanted to craft something that was voluntary, that provided the family with the ability for closure, the ability to understand that a human life was lost.”

Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has said he would veto the bill if it makes it to his desk.

In November, Wolf vetoed a bill that would have banned the abortion of children prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. He also vetoed, in 2017, a bill that would have limited abortions to 20 weeks into pregnancy, and banned dilation and evacuation abortions.

Similar bills regarding the treatment of fetal remains are being considered in Ohio and on the federal level.

The portion of an Indiana law requiring aborted babies to be cremated or buried was upheld by the US Supreme Court in May. In an unsigned opinion, the court cited a previous decision that states have a “legitimate interest in proper disposal of fetal remains.”

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Tokyo, Japan, Nov 27, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- “Most of Japanese people don’t know we exist,” Minori Takeuchi told CNA last week.

“Or they think we are connected to cults. They think, ‘You must be dangerous! Or crazy!&rsqu… […]

Tokyo, Japan, Nov 27, 2019 / 05:00 am (CNA).- On Sundays, Fr. Raniel Berdos can be found strolling the aisles of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo.

He wears a traditional black cassock and keeps his thick, black head of hair impeccable. He switches smoothly between Japanese and English, but maintains the same quiet enthusiasm through each conversation.

By the time the church is beginning to clear out, he’s been approached by no less than a dozen parishioners — many of them older “Church ladies,” eager to talk about this or that happening behind the scenes at the parish.

On his way back to his office, Berdos, 35, is handed a bag of bread by a parishioner, who reminds him to share with the other clergymen.

Berdos is a missionary to Japan, from the Philippines. The priest grew up in the Diocese of Tagum. He has been a priest for three years, and Japan is his first assignment since being ordained.

He was sent to Japan once before, for a break after his third year of theology studies. It wasn’t clear at the time whether he’d be sent back after his schooling was complete.

“It was ambiguous. They don’t want to preempt the decision of the general superior.”

Berdos is a member of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo, sometimes called the Scalabrinian Missionaries. The order was founded with the intention of providing aid and support to migrant Italians going out of Italy.

But since its foundation, the order has changed and morphed. It’s also tweaked its target missions to better fit the needs of the modern world — Italians leaving Italy no longer seem to require an entire order of clergy to oversee.

“What is relevant now is people going out for greener pastures and going abroad,” said Berdos. “We’re serving migrants, immigrants.

The Scalabrinians offer charitable assistance to migrants around the world. That can come in the form of medical help, as well as financial support.

“Even legal issues — we offer [help],” said Berdos.

At first, Berdos was disappointed with his assignment to Japan, or at least scared.

He had been expecting that as a new priest his first assignment would be somewhere where the order already had a sizable presence.

“My first desire was to go to Taiwan. Our congregation has two parishes in Taiwan, our mission is already stable in Taiwan,” Berdos said.

“But we are still young here,” he said.

“Here in Japan, we have to start from scratch.”

Berdos estimates that in his experience, there are two Japanese priests to every foreign priest serving the Archdiocese of Tokyo. But that number varies considerably across the country.

“Every diocese has its own situation.”

Despite the language gap and a steep learning curve, Berdos has managed to bond well with the other priests of St. Mary’s.

“My Japanese is still struggling, but I can get along in day to day conversation.”

Every month there is a meeting for the clergy of the parish. It is here that Berdos has opportunities to bond with priests he doesn’t usually work with directly.

“We bond through what makes us common. Maybe in small things, maybe in big things too.”

“I’m starting to feel at home here,” he said.

While begins to mesh into Japan, Berdos knows he might at any moment be plucked out of the country and sent elsewhere.

“We are moved according to the needs of the Church. This [parish] cannot be my kingdom,” he said, comparing a refusal to move elsewhere to staking a claim in a territory.

“Not forever, for sure,” he laughed.

For other priests or laity considering doing work in Japan, Berdos offered a simple piece of advice:

“The Japanese church is young in Tokyo. Perhaps here you’ll be able to integrate if you observe and be silent.

“In silence, you will be able to understand the words [between] the lines.”

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Tokyo, Japan, Nov 25, 2019 / 06:47 pm (CNA).- At a Jesuit university in Tokyo on Tuesday, Pope Francis said a quality university education should not be something out of reach for the average person, and should promote justice and the common good.

He … […]

Beijing, China, Nov 25, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- Leaked government documents from China have shed light on the country’s extensive network of internment camps for religious minorities, and exposed the use of an algorithm to determine who will be a… […]

Nagasaki, Japan, Nov 25, 2019 / 01:35 pm (CNA).- When Pope Francis offers Mass during international trips, an image of the Marian devotion of the country he is visiting is usually placed near the altar. On Nov. 24 the image used at a papal Mass in Nagasaki had an additional significance: It is a sculpture of Mary that survived the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945.

They call her the Virgin of Nagasaki or the Burnt Virgin. On Aug. 9, 1945, it was at the altar of the former Urakami cathedral, just a few blocks from the epicenter of the explosion of an atomic bomb dropped by American forces during the Second World War.

Originally the bust was part of a wood carving sculpted abroad and given to the cathedral in 1920. It was inspired by the painting of the Immaculate Conception by Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

The bomb that destroyed Nagasaki was dropped at 11:01 in the morning. That day Catholics were praying the novena of the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, for which a Mass was held. Everyone in the cathedral died, incinerated by temperatures exceeding 7,000 degrees. More than 35,000 people died in the city within hours; thousands more died in the months to follow. The cathedral was left in ruins.

When the bust was found, the face of the Virgin seemed fatally damaged, with empty eye sockets, and the cheeks and hair charred, and a crack on the left side of the face which, some believers say look now like tears of the Mother of God.

The image, also known as the Virgin of Urakami, is now placed in the new city’s new cathedral, built in 1959 on the ruins of  the first one. It has become a symbol of peace and the fight against the use of nuclear weapons.

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Tokyo, Japan, Nov 25, 2019 / 09:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis met Monday with Emperor Naruhito of Japan. It was the first meeting of the two less than two weeks since Naruhito completed the rituals that made him the newest emperor in the world’s oldest continuous hereditary throne.

Pope Francis is on his first visit to Japan, a country he’s desired to experience since he was in seminary. The trip lasts from Nov. 23-26.

The relationship between the Holy See and Imperial Household has been a strange one, but the papacy has a surprising amount in common with the Japanese imperial throne. And Pope Francis and Emperor Naruhito share similar stories about their rise to positions of leadership.

On Monday, the pontiff and the emperor reportedly greeted each other in Spanish, Pope Francis’s native language.

The meeting lasted approximately 30 minutes, after which Pope Francis moved on to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo to speak to Japanese youths.

Naruhito broke with Japanese imperial protocol by personally escorting the pope to his car after their conversation. The emperor is generally expected to stay inside his palace.

That decision speaks to the personal relationship between the two rulers, who have been openly supportive of each other in the past.

Earlier in the year, Pope Francis sent a letter of congratulations to Naruhito, wishing him luck in his governance.

The pope also sent a Vatican representative to the ceremony and celebratory banquet of the Emperor’s ascension to the throne last month.

Much as Pope Francis became the pontiff after the unexpected resignation of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, Naruhito rose to the Chrysanthemum Throne after the sudden resignation of Emperor Emeritus Akihito, his father.

Pope Francis was the first pope to follow a resignation since 1417, and Emperor Naruhito was the first to become emperor through similar means since 1817.
Emperor Emeritus Akihito’s resignation was the first since the establishment of the 1947 Japanese Constitution, and surprised the nation.

Both resignations brought some criticism from traditionalists.

Although the Emperor is the highest priest of the Shinto religion, the Imperial Family has in the past had Catholic members.

The Emperor’s own mother, Michiko, was raised in a Catholic family and attended Catholic schools in her youth. She has not openly practiced Catholicism since before she married Emperor Emeritus Akihito.

Additionally, the late Prince Asaka converted to Roman Catholicism in 1951, after the close of the Second World War, and practiced the faith until his death in 1951.

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Tokyo, Japan, Nov 25, 2019 / 03:34 am (CNA).- In the measure of a country, concern for human dignity and life is more important than economic strength, Pope Francis told Japanese authorities, civil servants, and diplomats Monday in Tokyo.

“Human dignity, needs to be at the center of all social, economic and political activity,” he said Nov. 25 at the prime minister’s official residence of Kantei.

He also said intergenerational solidarity and concern for the forgotten and excluded should be fostered, pointing in particular to the young, the elderly, and the lonely.

“We know that,” he added, “in the end, the civility of every nation or people is measured not by its economic strength, but by the attention it devotes to those in need and its capacity to be fruitful and promote life.”

In a change from the usual protocol, Pope Francis met with the prime minister and authorities of Japan at almost the end of his trip, rather than the beginning.

He also met with Emperor Naruhito Nov. 25.

The pope’s first full day in Japan was instead spent visiting Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where he spoke against nuclear weapons and honored the Japanese martyrs of the 17th and 18th centuries.

His visit to Japan was the second leg of a six-day trip to Asia, which began in Thailand Nov. 20-23.

Pope Francis urged authorities in Japan to include human ecology in their efforts to protect the environment, including “confronting the growing gap between rich and poor in a global economic system that enables a select few to dwell in opulence while the majority of the world’s population lives in poverty.”

He used the delicacy of Japan’s beautiful cherry blossom to illustrate the fragility of the common home to natural disasters and “to greed, exploitation and devastation at the hands of human beings.”

As a young Jesuit in Argentina, Pope Francis was inspired by the example of the first missionaries to Japan, such as St. Francis Xavier, and wanted to go to the country as a missionary, though he was prevented for health reasons.

“In these days, I have experienced and have come to esteem once more the precious cultural heritage that Japan throughout many centuries of its history has been able to develop and preserve, and the profound religious and moral values that characterize this ancient culture,” he said.

Praising the beauty of the country, he quoted the Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano, who wrote in 1579: “Whoever wishes to see what our Lord has bestowed upon man need only come to Japan to see it.”

He praised Japan’s attention to the suffering of the less fortunate, the handicapped, and the disabled.

Pope Francis also said that the purpose of his trip was “to confirm Japanese Catholics in their faith, their charitable outreach to those in need and their service to the country of which they are proud citizens.”

Before the meeting with authorities, Pope Francis celebrated Mass for 50,000 people in the Tokyo Dome. Present at the Mass was ex-death row inmate Iwao Hakamada.

Hakamada, 83, was released from death row after 48 years. A boxer, he had been convicted in 1966 of a quadruple murder but was released in 2014 when new DNA evidence led to a suspension of his sentence. He is currently awaiting retrial by Japan’s supreme court.

Hakamada was baptized in prison on Christmas Eve 1984. The Catholic bishops of Japan invited Hakamada to attend the papal Mass Nov. 25.

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Tokyo, Japan, Nov 24, 2019 / 09:28 pm (CNA).- If people neglect prayer and the interior life, they are at risk of becoming spiritual zombies, who seem fine on the outside, but on the inside are lonely and lacking life, Pope Francis said Monday.

Speaki… […]

Tokyo, Japan, Nov 24, 2019 / 07:49 pm (CNA).- In a meeting Monday with people affected by Japan’s 2011 “triple disaster,” Pope Francis criticized society’s indifference toward the suffering of others.

He said that decisions wil… […]