Catholic Culture Resources
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Catholic World News

Japanese bishop rues population decline

May 12, 2015

The bishop of Niigata, Japan, lamented the nation’s population decline and said that the Church is doing too little to counter it.

More than 80% of rural communities in his diocese, said Bishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, may cease to exist in 2040 as more of the region’s few young people move to Tokyo.

“As for our efforts to reverse this trend as Catholic Church in Japan, not much or nothing has been done as such,” he wrote in an analysis published by AsiaNews. The “main reason [for] this is that [the] majority of marriages are between Catholics and non-Catholics. In these commonly found marriage cases, it is quite difficult for a Catholic party to engage a non-Catholic partner to follow Catholic teachings.

Only 0.4% of the nation’s people are Catholic.

 


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  • Posted by: bernie4871 - May. 13, 2015 10:16 AM ET USA

    And just think of all those wonderful Catholics who persisted in belief during all those years they were isolated and without even a Bishop. A great tragedy is in the making. The Devil is having his way for now. But God is Just, and Justice will have its way. Here in the USA as well. Shut down life and you create your own demise as a people as well as individuals. Demographers forecast a crunch and it is only a few decades away.