With Courtney Mares

Vatican City, 26 October 2024 / 06:00

As the Tokyo archbishop faces the possibility of attending a future papal conclave after being named one of the Catholic Church’s new cardinals, he shared in an interview with CNA what he is looking for in the next pope.

“If a conclave happens very soon, I think what we need is someone who will succeed Pope Francis’ policy,” Cardinal-elect Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi said.

“Because he started this synodal path to create the synodal Church, and if someone… comes with a different agenda, then what we are doing is in vain, just disappearing.”

Kikuchi, who is in Rome this month as a delegate to the Synod on Synodality, said one of the challenges faced by newly appointed cardinals from Tehran, Iran; Turin, Italy; and Toronto, among others, will soon recognize 140 voting members of the College of Cardinals.

“A few days after the announcement was made, I went through the website to look up the names of all the cardinals under the age of 80, meaning those who are currently eligible to vote in a conclave. And I know some of them, but I don’t know most of them,” he said.

The 65-year-old archbishop underlined that he thinks it is important for new cardinals to get to know “senior cardinals” and learn “who they are, what they think, what their abilities are.”

“Otherwise it will be very difficult to elect someone as pope,” he added.

One of the many ways Pope Francis transformed the College of Cardinals during his 11-year papacy was by more than doubling the number of cardinal electors in Asia. When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, there were nine cardinals voting from Asia. It will be 22 after the upcoming consistency.

“There are a lot of cardinals from Asia, and among Asians, I think we know each other pretty well,” Kikuchi said. Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences.

As president of Caritas Internationalis, who succeeded Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle in this post, Kikuchi had the chance to meet many cardinals and bishops from around the world, but added: “But I don’t know… WHO these.”

The Japanese cardinal-elect noted that this month’s synod meeting provided an opportunity for leaders of federations of bishops’ conferences in Asia, Africa and Latin America to meet in Rome, and expressed hope that future cooperation between these federations would help. Build relationships.

“We call ourselves the conferences of bishops of the Global South,” he added.

A missionary heart for China

Like nearly half of the new cardinals recently chosen by Pope Francis, Kikuchi is a member of a religious community.

Kikuchi entered the Society of the Divine Word (SVD), a missionary order founded in 1875 to evangelize China, as a junior seminarian. He recalled that as a young boy, he was inspired by the story of Cardinal Thomas Tien Ken-sin, the first cardinal from China who was a member of the Divine Word order.

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“He was the archbishop of Beijing in the 1940s… and was expelled from China in the 1950s and died in Taiwan. I knew this story when I was in junior seminary. I really admired his courage in trying to maintain his presence in Beijing while the Communist (Party) was taking over the country,” Kikuchi recalled.

“We also had many missionaries who escaped from China and took refuge in Japan. “We have met many of them and they are truly inspiring on how to be a strong missionary,” he added.

After his ordination in 1986, Kikuchi had the chance to become a missionary in Ghana, where he served for eight years, becoming the first Japanese priest to serve as a missionary in Africa.

Now archbishop of Tokyo, he presides over a diverse flock that includes Catholics from mainland China who share with him both their troubles and their efforts to spread the faith in their homeland.

“There are a lot of Catholics from mainland China residing in Tokyo,” he said, highlighting a Chinese congregation with many members from the mainland.

Regarding the Vatican’s interim agreement with Beijing on bishop appointments, Kikuchi pointed to the need for clarity on diocesan boundaries. He explained that existing dioceses in mainland China do not align with historical diocesan boundaries established before the rise of communist rule.

“Officially speaking, the existing dioceses in mainland China are not real dioceses. The history of real dioceses dates back to before Communist China,” he said.

Kikuchi also spoke about the importance of the diplomatic relationship between the Vatican and Taiwan for the Church in the region.

“We are always watching carefully to see what the relationship between the Vatican and Taiwan will be,” he said. “The future of that relationship… will really affect the future of the Church in that region.”

The archbishop also sees the presence of 42,000 Filipinos residing in Tokyo as a potential evangelistic force in secular Japan. He described Tagle’s visit to Tokyo, where he encouraged Filipinos to view their presence in Japan as part of a divine plan to evangelize.

“You have your own reasons… but it is God’s plan to spread this good news to the Japanese community,” Kikuchi said.

Courtney Mares is the Catholic News Agency’s Rome Correspondent. The Harvard University graduate has reported for news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees. He is the author of “Blessed Carlo Acutis: A Saint in Sneakers” (Ignatius, 2023).