In 2015, when the Salesian Family celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Don Bosco, the Japanese Church was celebrating 150 years from the discovery of the "underground Christians" who had quietly survived 250 years of persecution. Just a few weeks after the consecration of the first Catholic Church in Nagasaki, in Oura, a French missionary met some women who confided: "We share the same heart."
One of those underground communities survived in the coastal district of Nagasaki, at Sotome, an area where three large communities of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus are present and active today. They are the 11th group of the Salesian Family. There are about 80 Sisters who run a hospital, a pharmacy, a retreat house, a home for senior citizens and one for elderly and sick sisters. By virtue of the common charismatic root, they have had a resident Salesian Chaplain for some decades at Sotome. For the past six years it has been Fr Tadeusz Sobon.
The Salesians have also been present for over 40 years in Aino, another suburb of Nagasaki, taking care of a small parish and a kindergarten. The education of non-Christian children in the kindergarten is the main way of reaching out to the local people. Although Sunday Mass is attended regularly by a small number of the faithful, there are already three generations and hundreds of Catholic past pupils of the school who came into contact with the Catholic Church through the Salesians and the Sisters of Charity of Jesus.
Today in Nagasaki there are about 60,000 Catholics, 4% of the local population - the highest percentage in the whole territory of Japan.
"Without a solid missionary spirituality you could easily get discouraged in Japan. But faith and patience bear fruit, and the blood of martyrs is a guarantee of this process!" says Fr Sobon.
