Paulo
Uchibori and Sons,
Dauntless Christian Samurai Martyrs
Dauntless Christian Samurai Martyrs
On
February 28, 1627, atop a volcano whose
boiling springs are known today as “Unzen Hell,” a fearless Catholic samurai
named Paulo Uchibori shouted out his final words to the ears of all his mortal
torturers and all the heavenly host: “Praised be the Most Blessed Sacrament!”
He had endured
a regime of tortures far beyond the reach of any merely-mortal power of
endurance. First, imprisonment along with his three sons in a dank,
pestilential dungeon of a prison within
the walls of Shimabara Castle; next, taken out to the grounds at the edge of
the castle’s moat, forced to watch as the lord of Shimabara’s torturers cut off
his beloved sons’ fingers—even five-year-old Ignacio didn’t flinch—before they
began to cut his own; then, stripped naked and taken out in a boat along with
other prisoners, forced to watch the taunting and drowning of his sons in the
cold waters of Shimabara Bay. Then, with the word CHRISTIAN branded on his
forehead, he was exiled into untouchability and homelessness, with all
Shimabarans forbidden to give him food or shelter lest they too taste the ruler’s
wrath. The effect of all this on Paulo Uchibori was, contrary to the ruler’s
and his torturers’ expectations, to prove the mettle of Paulo and his Christian
fellows in the crucible of hell’s most sadistic torments.
The story of Paulo Uchibori and his heroic sons, along
with stories of many other Christian martyrs of Japan, is to be found within
the pages of this author’s latest book,
Samurai of
Light: the Real Martyrs of “Silence”
©2019
by Luke O’Hara, Kirishtan.com
