The Mission of the Immaculate in Japan

And the master said to the servant, “Go out to the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23).

“The Immaculate must be introduced into the hearts of men, so that she may erect within them the throne of her Son, so that she may rouse them to a knowledge of him and inflame them with love for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.”¹

The Catholic faith was introduced to the Land of the Rising Sun with the arrival of the great Catholic missionary, St. Francis Xavier, on August 15, 1549. Already by the significance of this date we can see the providential hand of Mary Immaculate, the Mistress of history. St. Francis would even remark regarding his missionary efforts, “At times, I have failed to place an image of Our Savior’s Mother beside the cross. At such times, I have always found the people rebellious to the Gospel.” Although he was only in Japan for three years, his efforts yielded a modest harvest of a few thousand souls, but more importantly, it laid the foundation for future missionaries to reap a rich harvest; for after forty years there were 200,000 faithful and by 1614 when persecution began there were 1.8 million Catholics. This, of course, would come to a screeching halt in 1614 when the reigning Shogun would ban Christianity and begin a persecution of the Catholics that would last for over 250 years.

The Mission of the Immaculate began in Japan in 2019 after an inspiration came to Fr. Elias Mary Mills, FI, and Leslie Swanby, OCDS, while on a pilgrimage to the Catholic sites of Japan. Leslie and Fr. Elias had become acquainted in 2017 while he was rector at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin. A phone conversation between the two focused on the interesting history of the Catholic faith in Japan, with its many diverse saints and martyrs. Leslie, although an American, grew up in Japan, on and off, (from the age of three to eighteen) during the time her father was working for several US–Japanese joint venture corporations. While in Japan, Leslie developed a great love for the Japanese people and culture. During this period of her life, Leslie was not even baptized—let alone Catholic—but after becoming Catholic in her late twenties, her love for the Japanese grew and was elevated to a whole new level with a supernatural desire for their salvation. The result of this initial conversation with Fr. Elias would eventually lead Leslie to organize a pilgrimage to the Catholic sites of Japan.

Beginning in 2019, there have been four such pilgrimages to Japan which combine the spirituality of a pilgrimage with Marian evangelization. On December 12, 2020, Leslie made her consecration to the Immaculate at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and became an associate member of the MIM (Mission of the Immaculate Mediatrix)². Later, this consecration led to the founding of the Seibo Maria Roman Catholic Mission to Japan which “seeks to evangelize the people of Japan through the maternal mediation of the Immaculate Virgin Mary by distributing Miraculous Medals after the example of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Adopting their zeal for missions, [the Mission is] under the patronage of the Immaculata, the first missionary, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Maximilian Kolbe.”³

On the first pilgrimage in 2019, Fr. Elias brought along Miraculous Medals inscribed in English to share with the other pilgrims to hand out to those they might encounter during their travels while in Japan. One such moment that impressed both Leslie and Father was when they gave medals to two young ladies who were working in an ice cream shop. The young ladies were so happy to receive the medals that Leslie and Fr. Elias, too, received much grace in giving them. After the pilgrimage was over, they thought it would be good to organize future pilgrimages to hand out the medals as a way to evangelize Japan, which has a Christian population less than 1%. Furthermore, they were inspired to translate the words of the Miraculous Medal into the Japanese language. This seems to be very much in accord with St. Maximilian’s thoughts, as he wrote in one of his letters in 1932, in reference to some Chinese he had met on one of his journeys, “Obviously, I gave to these good and dear souls a Miraculous Medal, and I asked them to translate into Chinese the words that appear on it, in order to prepare the medals even in their own language.”⁴

The work of translating the words for the medal into Japanese was not as difficult as translating the short pamphlet that would accompany the medal, explaining the medal’s background and purpose. This turned out to be quite a challenge!

The first difficulty was due to the Japanese adopting the French word medaille when the French missionaries introduced religious medals in the 19th century, as no such word existed in the Japanese language then. When spelled out using the Japanese alphabet, which is phonetic, it sounds like “meh-die,” which is also the phonetic sounding word for “fish.” Advice was given that the traditional word for medal must be used, even though since the French introduction there is now a proper word for medal, medaru. A few samples of the pamphlet were printed using the fishy sounding word, and in a test run, puzzled looks were received from the recipients. When asked if there was something wrong, they responded that they were confused because the pamphlet stated they were being given a “miraculous fish”! It was decided to put both words in the pamphlet so as to eliminate confusion for Catholic and pagan.

The second problem had to do with the Japanese word for spirit—as in the Holy Spirit. Apparently, the word for spirit has the same sound as the word for “fairy,” but is spelled with different characters, so the pamphlet was informing them about the Holy Fairy instead of the Holy Spirit! Oh the life of a translator!

With the founding of the Seibo Maria Mission to Japan, it was now time to get to work. To aid in its evangelization efforts, the Seibo Maria Mission received a generous donation to make 20,000 miraculous medals in Japanese. Around the same time, Fr. Elias composed a prayer to Our Lady of Japan, which received an imprimatur from Bishop William Callahan, OFM, Conv., the bishop of La Crosse. The prayer contains both Kolbean and Xaverian expressions of praying through the intercession of Our Lady for the conversion of the Japanese people, transforming “the Land of the Rising Sun into the Land of the Risen Son.”

Covid came and prevented the missionaries from going on pilgrimage until the spring of 2023, when Fr. Elias and a few others had the privilege of visiting Sr. Agnes Sasagawa, who was then residing in a small care home in Kumamoto, Japan. Sr. Agnes was the visionary of the Marian apparitions at Akita. It was the last time anyone would visit her from the West before she passed away on August 15th, 2024. Once again, the date of Our Lady’s Assumption appears to be significant.

In April of 2025, Fr. Elias and a few pilgrims had the great privilege of spending half of a day with the Missionaries of Charity Sisters in Tokyo, Japan. The Mother Superior had heard that Fr. Elias was going to be leading a pilgrimage there and through contacts in Japan, they asked him if he would please come to celebrate Holy Mass and bless their convent. They had received some of the Miraculous Medals in Japanese and were very anxious to meet him. As most people know, Mother Teresa was a great apostle of the Miraculous Medal, largely influenced by St. Maximilian Kolbe. She referred to the Miraculous Medal as the “medal of charity,” and was known to grab a fistful of medals, kiss them, and then give them out to the poor. Since Seibo Maria Mission was interested in finding people in Japan who could continue distributing the medals, it was providential that Our Lady directed them to the zealous daughters of Mother Teresa. Not all of the Sister’s neighbors appreciate them and there are frequent calls to the police to complain that the Sisters are singing or praying too loudly! In the hot summer they are forced to keep their windows shut when praying in the chapel for fear of getting complaints. But in April, the temperature was cool outside and it was noticed that they only turned on the heat when they saw someone in our party rubbing their arms to keep warm. Not turning on the heat, of course, is normal to religious such as Fr. Elias and the Sisters, but for lay people it can be a shock to their systems. Many are cold but few are frozen!

Fr. Elias offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in their chapel, blessed the convent, and also gave a conference on Our Lady and her role in Japan to the Sisters and those accompanying Father. After all was done, the sisters insisted they stay for coffee, tea, and pastries. This was truly a blessing, as they got to visit with the Sisters and to hear about the good work they do serving the poor in Japan.

“We go along the river side and find the homeless people living in the bushes. We bring them onigiri (Japanese rice balls),” stated the Mother Superior. Through the Seibo Maria Mission of Japan home base near Mount Fuji, the volunteers there started supplying the sisters with the Japanese Miraculous Medal packets. Each packet contains a Japanese Miraculous Medal on a ball chain, along with the Japanese translated Miraculous Medal pamphlet.

The Sisters witnessed how they have seen a dramatic change in the poor they serve since handing out the Japanese Miraculous medals. “When we give out Miraculous Medals to people, we tell them that they will receive God’s blessings and He will help them. They all take them! We have taught them the Our Father and the Hail Mary in Japanese and we also sing hymns to Maria Sama. When we travel to Yokohama, the homeless there like to show us that they are wearing the Miraculous Medals we gave them. They hold them up proudly,” Mother Superior added. Also, before when the Sisters had volunteers helping them make the rice balls, they would pray the rosary and the Japanese volunteers would just remain silent. Since receiving the medals, the volunteers now join the Sisters in praying the rosary while preparing the food. The Missionaries of Charity Sisters also visit the local prison and detention center. “Now whenever the ladies come out, they ask us to give them more medals to share with their family members. We are happy to give them as many as they want,” stated one of the Sisters. The Sisters were so grateful when Fr. Elias and company gave them a few hundred more Miraculous Medal packets at the end of their visit with them.

After their wonderful visit, the Sisters insisted on driving Fr. Elias and the group back to the hotel where they were staying. As the Sisters drove the 45-minute drive, the little band prayed a five-decade rosary and the Sisters gave Leslie and the others the same onigiri rice balls for lunch that they give to the homeless people. Along the way, driving by the Arakawa River, the Sisters pointed out where they find homeless people living in the bushes. Unlike the United States, in Japan the homeless are ashamed, so instead of hanging out on the street corners and in the public places they hide in the bushes and wilderness areas of the city of Tokyo, like the banks of the Arakawa River. The Sisters have to go into these areas in search of them to give them food and to check if they are in need of medical
attention.

The last grace came on the closing day of their pilgrimage to Japan when Fr. Elias was told that the Mother Superior needed to talk to him before he left the country. When Father and Sister finally made contact, the Mother Superior, who had just returned from a visit to her homeland of Korea, told Fr. Elias that the Missionary of Charity Sisters living in both Korea and Mongolia—after seeing the Miraculous Medals in Japanese—were requesting Miraculous Medals and pamphlets in their respective languages! It appears Our Lady is intending to spread her mission even further. Already there is a generous benefactor who is willing to help with this effort. In the next segment, we will report about the growing interest among the faithful in Japan to make their consecration to the Immaculate. Please continue to pray for the Mission of the Immaculate to grow in Japan and elsewhere in the Far East. Ave Maria!