Bishop Jean-Claude Combas
The first Salesian missionaries were sent to Japan in 1925.
In fact, Bishop Jean-Claude Combas, who was the bishop of Nagasaki and all of Kyushu,
had sent numerous letters to the Vatican's Congregation for the Promotion of Faith, beginning in 1922,
requesting the dispatch of religious missionaries to work in his large dioceses.
He pointed out the Oita-Miyazaki region as a proselytizing area.
Three missionaries from the Paris Mission were already working here, caring for 300 Catholics out of a population of 1.5 million.
Fr Filippo Rinaldi, new General President of the Salesian Order
Towards the end of 1923, the Vatican's Congregation for the Propagation of Faith sent a letter to the new Superior General of the Salesian Order, Fr. Filippo Rinaldi, asking him to organize a mission
from Salesians as soon as possible and send it to the Diocese of Nagasaki, Japan.
The letter also stated a request that "Japan has a high level of culture, so the missionaries we send will be able to supervise institutions of higher education."
General Rinaldi accepted the invitation and guidance of the Holy See and began to visit Salesian houses with a view to creating a Salesian mission,
and he marked the end of 1925 as the year of its realization.
The reason this year was chosen was because 1925 marked the 50th anniversary (1875-1925) of the first mission sent by Don Bosco, the founder of the Salesian Society,
to the mission field, and because they wanted to make sufficient preparations for the mission.
To that end, in the summer of 1924, General Rinaldi asked Father Ignacio Canazei, the superior of the Salesian Society in China,
to visit Japan to investigate the current situation in the country.。
The report stated, "Japan, especially Tokyo and Yokohama, is in a state of devastation due to the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923,
but the people are relatively wealthy compared to China, they are working hard, and there seems to be hope in terms of evangelization.
The Kyushu region, especially Miyazaki City, was judged to be a backward and poor region."
Father Vincenzo Cimatti, director of the Valsalice College in Turin
At this very moment a letter from Father Vincenzo Cimatti, Rector of the Valsalice College in Turin, arrived on the desk of Superior General Rinaldi.
His fervent plea was, "Prepare for me the poorest, most hardship-ridden and most abandoned place in the mission field."
This was not the first time that he had written such a letter, but Father Cimatti found himself in a special situation at this time:
he had been professor of the normal school at the Valsalice College for 30 years, and was now facing the problem of reorienting Valsalice,
due to new regulations from the Italian Ministry of Education, which meant either closing the normal school or moving it elsewhere.
As expected, General Rinaldi saw this as a blessing from God's Providence and turned his attention to Father Cimatti as the head of the missionary congregation in Japan.
Indeed, on June 18, 1925, the day before the Feast of the Sacred Heart, Father Cimatti received the letter of appointment stating that he had been selected as head of the 50th anniversary missionary congregation.
The mission had nine members: six Salesian priests and three Salesian brothers. The priests were Vincenzo Cimatti (46 years old, head of the mission),
Giovanni Tangui (42 years old, French, from Salesio Spain),
Antonio Cavoli (38 years old, parish priest, former military chaplain, who joined the Salesians),
Peter Piacenza (an old student of Fr. Cimatti in Valsalice),
and Leone Liviabella and Angelo Margiaglia, who were not yet in their thirties.
The brothers were Luigi Guaschino, Alfonso Merlino and Giovanni De Mattia.
Cimatti Museum Father Marsilio
July 6, 2021
To the index page of Father Cimatti's life
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