A handsome boy, pride of the Tsuchiura Catholic Church

Father Michael and Friends of Ushiku did today the 10th June our regular visit to the Ushiku Detention House of the Japanese Immigration Bureau (入国者収容所東日本入国管理センター，牛久入管収容所).

I'd like to present here Father Michael's prayer for the detainees :
I praise you, Lord. I thank you with all my heart for the many graces and blessing that you have given me. Help and strengthen those who experience daily stress, those who are sick, those who are close to despair, those who miss their families so much. Lord, please continue to give strength and courage to all these good people who are surviving in the Detention Centre. Amen.

I met two of our brothers detained there. One has been in Japan since eight years, the other since twenty four years, without any social trouble. Why can't we receive them as Japanese citizens ?

I am very happy that one of them told me his compatriot who is the one I met on my first vist to the Ushiku House has obtained his provisional liberation. May God protect him in this sadly xenophobic society of Japan !

The last Sunday was the Pentecostal Sunday. Father Michael celebrated the first communion of several children. I was particularly impressed by one of them, a very handsome boy.

The father of this boy came to Japan with his family to escape from policital persecutions he suffered in his own country. On their arrival in Japan he and his family were detained in a Detention House of Japanese Immigration Bureau, but they are now in the condition of provisional liberation. The problem is that under this condition they can't have Japanese citizenship so that they are not allowed to work and that they can't benefit from any public service such as social security or public education.

Thanks to some benevolences the boy studies now in a private elementary school. His attitude in the ceremony of the first communion was impressively clever and reliable. He speaks beautifully the Emperor's Japanese. I think he will be capable of taking some leadership position in his society.

I pray God that his father may get political refuge in Japan and that he and his family may continue to live without persecution in this country.

Luc