Young Japanese Catholics:

Shibata Yoko, 23, from Shizuoka parish, said she came with joy because since high school “no matter how much I thought about it [martyrdom], I could not understand it.”

It all began when she read Endo Shusaku’s novel Silence, a story of the persecution of Christians in Japan. “I know that to die a martyr is splendid but I feel it is necessary to study the historical facts one by one.”

Shibata and four friends along with two priests spent two weeks in March on a pilgrimage that took them to Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Shizuoka and Nagasaki to retrace the path taken by the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Nagasaki, whom John Paul II compared to the early martyrs of Christianity for their fortitude. They travelled to places where the first Kirishitan (Japanese converts to Christians) lived in the second half of the 16th century.

At the Historical Materials Museum in Yamaguchi, 21-year-old Mana Ide of the Saku Church in Nagano saw for the first time a letter written by a martyred missionary. She was surprised to find the missionary writing that he had no fear, describing martyrdom as something magnificent.