Paul Aijirō Yamaguchi

Paul Aijirō Yamaguchi ( Japanese パ ウ ロ 山口 愛 次郎 Pauro Yamaguchi Aijirō ; born July 14, 1894 in Urakami ; † September 24, 1976 ) was a Japanese archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church .

Life

Yamaguchi was born in West Sonogi County of Nagasaki , now part of Nagasaki City. He studied at the University of Urbino in Rome and was ordained a priest there on December 24, 1923. On his return in 1924, he became a priest at the Tainoura Church in Shin-Kamigotō on the Gotō Islands . In 1926 he was appointed professor at the Catholic University of Nagasaki. In 1930 he became a pastor at Nakamachi Church in Nagasaki. Pope Pius XII appointed him on November 9, 1936 Apostolic Prefect of the Apostolic Prefecture Kagoshima and on July 1, 1937 Bishop of Nagasaki . On November 7, 1937, Paolo Marella , the Apostolic Delegate of Japan , ordained him bishop with the assistance of Jean-Baptiste-Alix Chambon MEP , Archbishop of Tokyo , and Albert Henri Charles Breton MEP, Bishop of Fukuoka .

In August 1943, Bishop Yamaguchi was sent to the island of Flores in the Dutch East Indies by the civil administration of the Southwest Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy . Flores had a Catholic population and the bishop advocated mild treatment towards the local population.

After the end of the war, he returned to Nagasaki , which had been destroyed by the atomic bomb , and initiated the reconstruction of the destroyed churches. In 1948, at an extraordinary session, he was appointed a member of the Nagasaki City Public Safety Commission, which was supposed to oversee reforms of the police administration. When the bishopric was raised to archbishopric, he became the first archbishop. On June 8, 1962, he presided over a mass for the canonization of the Nagasaki Martyrs . From 1962 to 1965 he took part in three sessions of the Second Vatican Council . On December 19, 1968, Pope Paul VI. he retired and made him titular archbishop pro hac vice of Massa Lubrense . He resigned from this on February 4, 1971.

Individual evidence

• Peter Post: The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War . Brill, Leiden 2010, ISBN 978-90-04-16866-4 .

Web links

• Entry on Paul Aijirō Yamaguchi on catholic-hierarchy.org (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
Januarius Kyūnosuke Hayasaka	Bishop / Archbishop of Nagasaki 1937–1959 / 1959–1968	Joseph Asajirō Cardinal Satowaki