Cardinal Kikuchi: Catholic schools an evangelizing presence in Japan

The Catholic Church in Japan will gain new members this Easter, with scores of people set to receive baptism in Tokyo alone.

“In Tokyo alone this Easter, more than 100 individuals will be baptized,” Cardinal Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo told Crux Now.

There has been a Catholic presence in Japan for nearly five centuries, during which the faithful in the country have faced long stretches of frequently ruthless persecution.

Japan began opening to the wider world in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the country’s post-WWII constitution guarantees religious liberty.

Today, however, Catholics account for less than one-half of one percent of total population in Japan, a country of 123 million people.

Two of the people preparing to receive baptism this Easter are a mother-daughter pair: 8-year-old Minami Kimura, who attends Shirayuri Gakuen Elementary School in Tokyo, and Maiko Kimura, her mother, will receive baptism on Easter Sunday at Tokyo’s Kojimachi Church.

The younger Kimura expressed her wish to be baptized as a Catholic after encountering Jesus and the faith in kindergarten at Shirayuri Gakuen, a prestigious French mission school founded by the Convent of St. Paul of Chartres in the heart of the capital.

“I don’t