St. Paul Miki

Paul Miki was born around 1562 in Japan into a wealthy and prominent family. His father was a military commander who had served under Oda Nobunaga, and the family's social position gave young Paul access to excellent education. The Miki family had converted to Christianity through the influence of the Jesuit missionaries who had been working in Japan since the arrival of Francis Xavier in 1549. Paul was baptized as a child and grew up immersed in the still-young Japanese Christian community, which by the 1570s numbered in the tens of thousands.

Miki was educated by the Jesuits and eventually joined the Society of Jesus himself, becoming a scholastic (a Jesuit in formation for the priesthood). He was known for his preaching, which reportedly drew large crowds across Japan, and he became one of the most effective evangelists in the country during a period when Christianity was growing but also attracting political suspicion. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the de facto ruler of Japan, had initially tolerated the foreign religion but grew alarmed at its spread and at the political implications of loyalty to a faith centered outside Japan. In 1587 he issued edicts ordering missionaries expelled, though enforcement was initially lax.

The crisis came in late 1596. Hideyoshi ordered the arrest of twenty-six Christians in Kyoto, including Paul Miki and other Jesuits, Franciscan friars from the Philippines, and Japanese laypeople and catechists. The group was forced to march roughly 600 miles to Nagasaki in the dead of Japanese winter, a journey that took weeks and was itself a form of torture. In Nagasaki, on February 5, 1597, the twenty-six were crucified on a hillside as a public warning. The youngest victims were young boys; the oldest were elderly.

Paul Miki, still a scholastic and not yet ordained a priest, was allowed to give a final sermon from his cross. He preached to the thousands who had gathered, declaring that he was dying as a Japanese man for whom Japan was the cradle of Christianity, and proclaiming that there was no way to salvation other than through Christ. He also publicly forgave his executioners. On February 6, 1597, after he had finished speaking, he and the other twenty-five martyrs were killed by lance thrusts. They are known collectively as the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan, and Paul Miki is generally regarded as their leader and the most prominent voice among them.

The martyrdom did not stop Christianity in Japan as Hideyoshi had hoped; underground communities continued for centuries. Pope Pius IX beatified the twenty-six in 1862, and Pope Pius IX canonized them in 1862 as well (some sources date the formal canonization to 1862, though devotional recognition had been granted earlier). Their feast day is celebrated on February 6, and in 2017 Pope Francis recognized Paul Miki and his companions as a model of ecumenical witness, since the group included members of both the Jesuit and Franciscan orders, something rare for a single canonization. Paul Miki is honored as a patron of Japan, and his image on the cross remains one of the most recognizable symbols of Japanese Christianity.