HONG KONG (SE): Tarcisio Isao Cardinal Kikuchi, archbishop of Tokyo, spent seven days in Hong Kong in mid-August at the invitation of his own religious congregation, the Society of the Divine Word [SVD]. He preached a five-day retreat for missionaries and later found time to engage in a set of encounters that touched on vowed life, youth ministry, and the growing relationship across Asian dioceses.
A retreat with an edge
From August 17 to 21, Cardinal Kikuchi led a retreat for nearly 30 Divine Word missionaries serving in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, gathered at St. Paul’s House of Prayer in Sheung Shui. His message did not flatter the vocation. Religious life, he told the group, runs against the grain of ordinary human wants—comfort, security, ease—and final vows do not settle that tension once and for all. The commitment has to be renewed, in practice, every day.
The vow renewal ceremony at the close of the retreat is far more than a formal ritual, he said, it is not a ceremony to get through but a chance to choose, again, what was already chosen once.
Speaking to the Sunday Examiner on August 23, the cardinal said the invitation carried particular weight for him. He had been to Hong Kong on several previous occasions—as president of Caritas Internationalis and for regional meetings—but had never preached a retreat for his own confreres there.
He pointed to what he called the defining trait of the SVD: a congregation built from many nationalities and cultures, united by a shared task of proclaiming the gospel. That global identity, he said, is precisely why the Hong Kong and Macau district thought to bring in a bishop from Japan to lead them.
After the retreat, he travelled briefly to Macau with district superior, Father Franz Gassner. Father Gassner said the cardinal had pushed the missionaries to set aside their own agendas and listen instead for where the Holy Spirit was already leading—discernment over planning.
He added that the missionaries could see the cardinal was not simply offering advice from a distance: Cardinal Kikuchi had served as a Caritas chaplain in refugee camps in Rwanda and was the first Japanese missionary sent to Africa. Father Gassner called him a man who practices what he preaches.
An afternoon in Tai O
On August 22, the cardinal travelled to Tai O, the fishing village on Lantau Island and a Mass centre of Epiphany Parish where the SVD missionaries have served for over a decade, to meet more than 50 young Catholics from Holy Family Parish, Visitation Parish, St. Teresa Parish and the local youth community. The day’s theme, “Walk Together, Talk Together,” set the tone.
The group met at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chapel, where Claretian Father Jojo Peter Ancheril opened with icebreakers before lunch.
At Mass, Cardinal Kikuchi preached on synodality—a word, he said, that gets misread as an administrative system, a form of Church politics, or an idea handed down from Rome. It is none of those things, he told the young people. It is simply what it means to be Church: people holding each other up, because no one survives the life of faith alone.
Questions from the floor ranged from how the Church is governed, to how a papal conclave works, to how young people today might actually go about spreading the gospel. Cardinal Kikuchi said their missionary instincts left him genuinely encouraged.
He reminded them that Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs, not alone—a detail he returned to when he said that meeting Christ has never been a private affair but something realised in community and in real relationships with other people. The afternoon closed with a walk through the village, snacks, and conversation.
Building the road between Tokyo and Hong Kong
On August 22, Cardinal Kikuchi also met Cardinal Stephen Chow, S.J., at the Diocesan Centre, Caine Road. Cardinal Kikuchi recalled that Cardinal Stephen had raised the idea of more exchange between the two dioceses—an idea he said he took to readily, floating the prospect of encouraging lay Catholics from Tokyo to Hong Kong to build shared experience and mutual growth.
On August 23, his last day in the city, the cardinal celebrated Mass at St. Teresa’s Church and a separate Mass for the Japanese-speaking community at St. Margaret Mary’s Church.
The visit further strengthened Cardinal Kikuchi’s ties with the Hong Kong Church: he was in the city to join the opening Mass for the Diocese of Hong Kong’s 80th anniversary this past December.
