Japan PM to meet Pope

Published Date: June 29, 2009

Japan’s Catholic prime minister, Taro Aso, will meet Pope Benedict in a private audience at the Vatican on July 7, the day before the G8 Summit opens in Italy, Vatican and diplomatic sources say.

“The fact that the Pope and prime minister are meeting is both significant and valuable,” Japan’s ambassador to the Holy See, Kagefumi Ueno, told UCA News. He recalled that Japan and the Holy See established diplomatic relations in 1942.

It will be the first meeting between a Japanese prime minister and a Pope since former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi visited Pope John Paul II in 1999.

The 68-year-old Aso and the 82 year-old pope will talk through translators in the Pope’s private library at the Vatican.

Topics of conversation have not been revealed, however observers in Rome believe the talks are likely to include G8 Summit issues such as world economy, poverty, climate change, international denuclearization - in particular the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula - and the Palestinian-Israeli issue.

Archbishop Peter Takeo Okada of Tokyo, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan, together with the heads of the episcopal conferences in other countries, sent a letter on June 22 to Japan’s premier and leaders of the other G8 countries.

In it, the bishops urged these countries’ leaders “to take concerted actions to protect poor persons and assist developing countries in the upcoming G8 Summit,” and also indicated how this could be done.

Sources in Rome think the prime minister may also invite Pope Benedict to visit Japan. Pope John Paul II visited the country in 1981.

Although Catholics are a tiny minority in Japan - 1 million in a population of 127 million, and only 445,000 are native Japanese according to 2007 statistics - Taro Aso is actually the third Catholic to become prime minister in modern history, according to Ambassador Ueno.

But he is the only one of the three to meet the Pope.

The other Catholic prime ministers were Hara Takashi (1918-1921) and Hosokowa Morihiro (1993-94).

SOURCE

Japan’s Catholic prime minister to meet Pope (UCA News)

LINKS

Catholic Bishops Conference of Japan

Taro Aso (Wikipedia)

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