Japanese bishops, including the
president of the bishops' conference, met with Pope Benedict XVI and top
Vatican officials to discuss the Neocatechumenal Way.
The Dec. 13 meeting with four Japanese bishops had been called by Pope
Benedict, said the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of
Japan, Archbishop Leo Jun Ikenaga of Osaka.
He told Catholic News Service
that the meeting lasted nearly two hours and included the Vatican
secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and "several other
cardinals."
While the archbishop would not comment on the substance of the meeting,
he said the bishops would have to have further discussions with the
Vatican and the Neocatechumenal Way's co-founder, Kiko Arguello.
The Japanese bishops "have to make a plan to proceed," he said, adding, "We have to proceed slowly."
The meeting came more than a year after the Neocatechumenal Way's Redemptoris Mater seminary in Takamatsu was closed.
Bishop Francis Osamu Mizobe of Takamatsu and the diocesan pastoral
council wanted to shut down the seminary because of concerns that the
activity of the Way's members was damaging the unity of Japan's small
Catholic community.
The Vatican conducted an investigation in 2007, and in 2008, Cardinal
Bertone released a letter announcing the seminary would be closed and
that many of the seminarians and faculty would be transferred to the
Redemptoris Mater seminary in Rome.
According to an April 2009 news release on the Japanese bishops' website, the Neocatechumenal Way disagreed with the closure.
The bishops' concerns with the Way and the seminary were so strong that
they traveled to Rome twice in early 2008 after their "ad limina" visit
in December 2007.
They met with Vatican officials and the pope to discuss what Tokyo
Archbishop Peter Takeo Okada, then-president of the bishops' conference,
said was "a serious problem."
"The powerful sect-like activity of Way members is divisive and
confrontational. It has caused sharp, painful division and strife within
the church," the archbishop said Dec. 15, 2007, in an address to the
pope during the bishops' "ad limina" visit, made every five years to
report on the status of the dioceses.
The archbishop appealed to the
pope for assistance, saying his input "was direly needed."
SIC: CNS/INT'L