St. Paul Miki and Companions

Their story

When St. Francis Xavier brought the Gospel to Japan in 1549, it was warmly received, and within fifty years there were many thousands of Japanese Catholics. Paul Miki was born around 1564 into a wealthy Japanese family and was educated by the Jesuits. He joined the Society of Jesus and became a gifted preacher who could explain the faith in ways his fellow Japanese could understand. He was close to being ordained a priest. The ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi came to fear the growing Christian community. In late 1596 he ordered the arrest of a group of Christians in Kyoto and Osaka. They were twenty-six in all: Paul Miki and two other Japanese Jesuits, six Franciscan missionaries from Spain, Mexico and India, and seventeen Japanese lay Catholics, among them catechists and three boys, the youngest only twelve. Part of each prisoner's left ear was cut off, and they were marched for about a month through the winter to Nagasaki, so that others would be frightened away from the faith. Instead, they sang hymns and encouraged one another along the way. On February 5, 1597, they were raised on crosses on a hill outside Nagasaki. From his cross Paul Miki preached one last sermon. He said that he was Japanese and had done no wrong, that he was dying because he had taught the Gospel, and that he forgave the ruler and his executioners. Then they were killed with spears. They were canonized in 1862. When missionaries were finally allowed back into Japan in the 1860s, they discovered thousands of "hidden Christians" who had secretly kept the faith alive for more than two hundred years.