Christian history in Nagasaki City
For our special presentation on our talkshow on Straight from the Sky, we support the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. in celebrating Mandaue Business Month with this year’s theme, “Bold Moves, New Frontiers” with MCCI President Glenn Soco and Mandaue Business Month Chairman Mr. Steven Yu who will explain to us the economic growth of Mandaue City through the years. Can the Mandaue Chamber members also help in the flooding problem in Mandaue? That is something we will be talking about.
The Mandaue Business Month will feature many speakers, among them my good friend and renowned Urban Planner, Architect Felino “Jun” Palafox Jr. and many more. So watch this show on SkyCable’s channel 53 at 8:00PM tonight with replays on Wednesday and Saturday. We also have replays on MyTV channel 30 at 9:00PM tonight and at 7:00AM and 9:00PM respectively on Wednesday and Friday.
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Nagasaki City — Tomorrow is the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombing of the City of Nagasaki, the second and the last nuclear bomb to be dropped in wartime, which resulted in the end of hostilities of World War II. But we didn’t come to Nagasaki for the commemoration of that event at the Atomic Bomb Hypocenter. In fact, we just passed by the place last Friday as preparations are being made to commemorate that anniversary. We went to Nagasaki City with Mr. Robert “Bobby” Joseph, Tourism Adviser to Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo and his friends in the Travel Organization in order to forge ties with the Nagasaki Prefecture for tourism and cultural promotion.
One such unique attraction to Nagasaki especially for us Filipinos is that Christianity was first introduced to Japan in the 1549 when St. Francis Xavier who started the Jesuit missions there. If there was no oppression by the TokogawaShogunate against the Christian Daimyos (Lords), Nagasaki City would have been turned the whole of Japan into a Christian country. But that was not meant to be. In February 5, 1597, 26 Christians (Krikistans) were crucified in Nishizaka Hill, most of them Jesuit priests and laymen, two Spaniards, a Mexican, and a Portuguese in a brutal repression that lasted for 250 years.
We visited that hill, which has become a pilgrimage site for Japanese and Korean Christians and I think we Filipinos should make Nagasaki City part of our pilgrimage tours. Behind the monument of the 26 crucified martyrs is a statue of San Lorenzo Ruiz who was also tortured and killed in that hill in a much later time. The curator of the 26 Martyrs Museum is Fr. Renzo De Luca, a priest from Argentina who was personally appointed to head this facility by Pope Francis who wants to visit Nagasaki to honor his fellow Jesuit martyrs when he visits Nagasaki in the near future.
We were so blessed that Fr. Renzo did not only become our tour guide to enlighten us of the brutal repression of Christians, hundreds of years ago. He also said a special healing mass for our group in St. Philip of Jesus Christ Chapel behind the museum, which by the way is in the tourist information map of Nagasaki City. There are 130 Catholic Churches in Nagasaki City. But we visited one particular church near the Nagasaki City Harbor.
The Oura Cathedral is located high up on a steep hill overlooking Nagasaki Harbor. Its major significance came in the year 1862 when two priests Fr. Louis TheoloreFuret and Fr. Bernard Petijean were dispatched to Nagasaki after the lifting of the ban against Christians and in that church in Oura District, they met the “Hidden Christians” who were descendants of Catholics from 250 years of repression. The French priests were shocked that Christianity survived hundreds of years of repression.
To prove their true Catholic faith, the hidden Christians showed their rosary and asked for a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Apparently many of these hidden Christians used Kwan Yin or Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy as their cover to pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Of a particular interest for me is that Nagasaki, just like the City of Hiroshima, was obliterated by the atomic bomb. Yet when they rebuilt their city from scratch, they reinstalled their Tram mass transit system. Trams are trains that run on rails embedded on the street and you can find trams mostly in Europe and there’s one in Jerusalem and the most famous one is in San Francisco, California. I’m interested in Trams simply because we do not need to construct huge infrastructure like the Light Rail Transit or Metro Rail Transit in Metro Manila. That means it can be constructed faster and cost lower as there would be no need for overhead passes. So instead of an LRT for Metro Cebu, let seriously study the Tram rail system.
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