Press Conference,
Cardinal Jose Saraiva,
Representative of Pope Benedict XVI

The speech and Q & A will be in Italian with English interpretation.

Nearly four hundred years after their brutal persecution at the hands of the Tokugawa government, 188 Japanese Christians are receiving recognition from the Vatican.

A beatification ceremony being staged later this month will see the special representative of Pope Benedict XVI recognize 188 martyrs who died between 1603 and 1639. The ceremony will be conducted in front of more than 30,000 people at Nagasaki's Big N Stadium.

The persecution suffered by Japan's Christians from the 1600s was brutal, yet largely unknown. Violence was visited upon both religious leaders and their followers after Christianity was outlawed by the then government. Leading the list of those being recognized is Peter Kibe, born in 1579 in Oita prefecture. He was martyred in Edo in 1639 because of his determination to become a priest, having walked from India to Rome to be ordained. Another is Julian Nakaura, who died in Nagasaki in 1639. He had been part of the first legation to Europe (1582-1590) and therefore one of Japan's first bridge-builders to the Western World.

Five of the 188 martyrs were priests, or members of religious orders. The remainder were ordinary citizens, killed because they refused to abandon their beliefs in the face of government prohibition. Their beatification comes after a determined campaign by Christians both inside Japan and around the world to recognize the faith of those who suffered.

Ahead of the massive ceremony to be staged in Nagasaki, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins C.M.F. - the special representative of Pope Benedict XVI - will speak at a special press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club. He'll be joined by "Postulator of the Cause" Father Fernando Rojo, a key figure in winning Vatican recognition of the Japanese martyrs.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva