Rome (AsiaNews) – A high-level symposium on the Marega Papers opens tomorrow in the Pius X Hall in the Vatican centred on the agreement to translate and inventory historical papers that document the Christian presence in Japan. The venue also provides an opportunity to honour Christian martyrs in Japan.
The Vatican Apostolic Library, Japan’s National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU) and the Japanese embassy to the Holy See are behind the event. The latter is expected to draw some leading Japanese scholars of the period (17th-19th centuries), which saw the presence and the persecution of Christians in Japan.
The Marega Papers are an estimated 10,000 documents, dating from the early 1600s to the mid-1800s, that chronicle the persecution of Christians in Japan.
They were brought to the Vatican by an Italian missionary, Fr Mario Marega, in the 1940s, and kept in the Vatican Archives until 2010, when they were rediscovered by researcher Delio Proverbio.
The papers, which are in rice paper, are so delicate that can be touched only with special gloves. Mgr Cesare Pasini, prefect of the Vatican Library, considers them "the largest collection of its kind".
Last year, the Vatican Library and four Japanese historical institutes signed a six-year agreement to translate and inventory the collection.
The first paper is dated 1719, and refers to the arrival of Christianity in Japan in 1549 via Jesuit missionaries. Another paper, evincing the growth of the Christian faith in the country, mentions four Japanese noblemen who travelled to Rome in 1585 for the election of Pope Sixtus V.
Of course, many of the documents refer to the persecution ordered by Shogunate against the new community, describing in detail the martyrdom of 26 Christians in Nagasaki, which led to the ban of Christianity in 1612.
The Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library Mgr Cesare Pasini, the Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church Mgr Jean-Louis Brugues, the Japanese Ambassador to the Holy See Teruaki Nagasaki and NIHU President Tachimoto Narifumi are expected at the symposium.