Chiesa dei Santissimi Martiri Giapponesi (Church of the Holy Martyrs of Japan), Civitavecchia

The Church of the Holy Japanese Martyrs is located in Largo San Francesco d'Assisi, easily reachable with a pleasant walk that starting from the Civitavecchia Marina and passing through the Pirgo platform takes you to the Thaon de Revel seafront, with its small restaurants open and the small marina of the Naval League. Once you get here, just turn left onto Largo San Francesco d'Assisi and you will find yourself in front of the large church. In the small square in front there is the statue of Saint Francis of Assisi while inside the church it is possible to admire the splendid frescoes by the Japanese painter Luca Hasegawa. To fully understand the history of this church it is necessary to go back to 1549, the year in which the Jesuit fathers, led by Saint Francis Xavier, left Italy for Japan to convert the Japanese population to Christianity. The mission manages to bring in so many proselytes that the Japanese shogun issues an expulsion decree against the Jesuits. When the Franciscan friars also landed in Japan in 1593, the matter became complicated, provoking a second reaction from the shogun, this time even harsher. On February 5, 1597, on a hill outside Nagasaki, 26 crosses were raised : 6 Spanish missionaries, 17 Japanese Franciscan (lay) tertiaries and 3 Japanese Jesuits: a sacristan, a catechist and a preacher known as Paolo Miki. From here onwards a long process of canonization began which only ended on 8 June 1862, the day on which the 26 Japanese martyrs were finally raised to the glory of the altars. In the meantime, Civitavecchia, thanks to the traffic of its port which at the time belonged to the Church, became an important stop for all the religious people leaving and returning from the missions, giving rise to the need to build a new meeting point. Luca Hasegawa worked on the frescoes from 1951 to 1957, sharing the life of the convent in the meantime. Having returned to Japan in 1967 he set out again for Civitavecchia with the intention of continuing the fresco of the vault, but once he arrived in Rome, he was struck by a sudden heart attack. Among the first figures that Hasegawa painted, the beautiful Madonna and child with the kimono (with oriental features and wearing 16th century clothing) and the scene of the 26 Japanese martyrs, who fell on the Nagasaki hill on 5 February 1597, imprinted in the five paintings of the apse. On the sides of the Madonna are represented, Saint Francis Xavier, the first Jesuit to introduce the Christian religion to Japan and Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Order while on the sides of the apse Hasegawa pays homage to Saint Fermina, patron saint of Civitavecchia and to Hasekura Tsunenaga, first Japanese to land in the city in the 17th century. The paintings of the 6 side altars, completed three years later, respectively depict Saint Peter with the keys of Paradise, Saint Paul, Saint Joseph and the Child Jesus and Saint Francis of Assisi, while in the chapel with the statue of the Virgin Mary and in that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the painting of Saint Anthony of Padua with the Child Jesus in his arms.

The Church of the Holy Japanese Martyrs is located in Largo San Francesco d'Assisi, easily reachable with a pleasant walk that starting from the Civitavecchia Marina and passing through the Pirgo platform takes you to the Thaon de Revel seafront, with its small restaurants open and the small marina of the Naval League. Once you get here, just turn left onto Largo San Francesco d'Assisi and you will find yourself in front of the large church. In the small square in front there is the statue of Saint Francis of Assisi while inside the church it is possible to admire the splendid frescoes by the Japanese painter Luca Hasegawa. Unique in its kind and famous throughout Europe is the beautiful Madonna and child with the kimono (with oriental features and wearing 16th century clothing) and the scene of the 26 Japanese martyrs, who fell on the Nagasaki hill on 5 February 1597, imprinted in the five paintings of the apse.

The Church of the Holy Japanese Martyrs was built in the years preceding 1870, by the Missions of the Holy Land and entrusted to the Observant Minors, dedicated to twenty-six Franciscan martyrs in Nagasaki, and is decorated with frescoes and Japanese mosaics executed by the painter Lucas Ha Segawa. The relations between Civitavecchia and Japan are not of recent date, but tradition says that they date back to the early 1600s, when Paul V and the city had such importance in the world that on 18 October 1615 from Tsukinoura, after crossing seas and mountains, arrived Hasekura Tsuneaga, ambassador to Paul V of Lord Date Masamune of Sendai in Japan, accompanied by the Spanish priest Sotelo and fifteen other delegates. To commemorate this sensational event, a statue representing this ancient Japanese friend was placed near Piazza Calamatta. ***PH***