Pope meets with Japanese bishops to discuss Neocatechumenal Way

(December 15, 2010) 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. He said that 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 and 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.