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Baan Phu Waan (Bangkok), 24 February 2023 – “Indifference could kill so that we need solidarity to produce hope to live. Church has to be at the center of producing hope. Church should not be the source of despair and sadness. We have to be the source of hope because we have the Gospel of life, Gospel of hope and we are the one walking together in solidarity on the path of sinodality”. This was the appeal that Archbishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi SVD, Archbishop of Tokyo and Secretary General of the FABC, made this morning to the participants at the opening mass of the Continental Synod Assembly being held in Bangkok until 26 February.
While the participants in Bangkok are starting their discernment to gather the fruit of the Continental Stage in Asia, Archbisop Kikuchi reminded how the synodal journey has been particularly affected not only by the difficulties of translating documents in so many different Asian languages, but particularly by the Pandemic “our biggest challenge was simply not to able to gather people because of the pandemic”. However – the Segretary General of FABC proceeded – “as we understand through our journeying together on this synodal path that this Synod is not only one time passing event to celebrate but rather to realize change of attitude of entire people of God to make synodality the foundational nature of the Church, we know this journey will continue after the actual meetings. So as the pandemic situation is getting better and activities of the society has been resuming, we have strong foundation now to continue our journey together”.
Archbishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi
Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi is a Japanese Roman Catholic bishop, and a member of the Divine Word Missionaries. He was ordained priest in 1986, and was appointed bishop of Niigata on September 20, 2004. Prior to that he served in Ghana, in Western Africa as a missionary.
In 2017, he was appointed as the Archbishop of Tokyo. Kikuchi also serves as the President of Caritas Japan as well as a member of Caritas Asia. He is a member of the Representative Council of Caritas Internationalis. Archbishop Kikuchi was named the secretary general of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) on July 22, 2021.