Our Lady of Akita

The seer

Katsuko Sasagawa came from a Buddhist family. As a young woman she spent many years severely ill, unable to move after an operation that went badly. Accounts say she improved after a Catholic nurse gave her water from Lourdes, and that she then asked for baptism and took the name Agnes. Details of these years vary between sources.

She worked as a catechist at the church of Myoko-kogen and there lost her hearing. Bishop Ito's letter says that Dr Sawada of the Rosai Hospital in Joetsu diagnosed her total deafness as incurable, and issued the papers for a state allowance. Since she could no longer teach, she went to a small community in the hills outside Akita to live a life of prayer. She entered on 12 May 1973.

The place

The Handmaids are a small community in the north of Japan. Bishop Ito says in his letter that he was in close contact with them from their foundation; one report calls him their founder. In their chapel stood a statue about three feet tall, carved from a single block of katsura wood in 1963 by an Akita sculptor, named as Saburo Wakasa. It follows the image of the “Lady of All Nations”. About that image, see the note below.

June 1973: the first signs

On 12 June, Sister Agnes reported brilliant rays coming from the tabernacle in the chapel, and this happened on the two following days. She told Bishop Ito. On 28 June a cross-shaped wound appeared on the palm of her left hand. It bled and caused her much pain.

6 July 1973: the first message

Sister Agnes reported a voice coming from the statue while she prayed in the chapel. She reported that her guardian angel had also appeared to her. The same day, some sisters saw drops of blood from the statue's right hand. The voice told her she would be healed of her deafness, asked for prayer in reparation for sins, and prayed with her the community's prayer of offering to the Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist.

3 August and 13 October 1973: the second and third messages

These are the messages for which Akita is known, and for which it has been much misused. They are summarised in the table below, and “How to read the warnings” follows it. On 13 October the voice said this was the last time it would speak to her.

On 29 September the wound in the statue's hand disappeared, and the sisters noticed the statue seeming to sweat, with a sweet perfume, on the forehead and neck. Sister Agnes's own wound also later vanished.

The tears, 1975 to 1981

On 4 January 1975 the statue began to give off, from the eyes, a liquid like tears. Bishop Ito records that this happened 101 times, up to 15 September 1981, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. He writes that he saw it himself on four occasions and tasted the liquid twice, that about 500 people saw it, Christians and non-Christians, and that it happened at times when Sister Agnes was asleep or was 400 kilometres away with her family. A figure of more than 2,000 witnesses is also found in other writing, and is not from the bishop's letter. A Japanese television crew is reported to have filmed it, and sources disagree on the year.

Bishop Ito says Professor Sagisaka of Akita University, a specialist in legal medicine, found the liquid to be identical to human tears. Other accounts add a report that the blood was of type B, and the tears and sweat of type AB.

Sister Agnes also reported an angel who, on 28 September 1981, showed her a passage of the Bible, Genesis 3:15, and linked the number 101 to the woman of that verse, Eve and Mary, with God between. This is her report and no more.

The healing of her hearing

Her hearing is reported to have returned for a time in October 1974 and then to have been lost again in March 1975. Bishop Ito records that an angel told her, on 25 March and 1 May 1982, that the cure was near. On 30 May 1982, Pentecost Sunday, during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, she was cured “completely and instantly”. She telephoned the bishop that same evening. On 3 June 1982 Dr Sawada certified that he found no anomaly in either ear. Reference accounts note that the hospital certified the hearing and did not call it a miracle, which is not a hospital's work in any case.

A healing in Korea

Bishop Ito also cites Teresa Chun Sun Ho, a South Korean woman with cancer of the brain, reduced to a vegetative state in July 1981. He writes that she recovered suddenly while priests and Korean women prayed through Our Lady of Akita for her. He visited her in Seoul and saw the X-rays, which were sent to Rome. Later writers disagree about this case.

What became of Sister Agnes

Sister Agnes lived on quietly with the Handmaids for four more decades. She died on 15 August 2024, the Assumption, aged 93, after long medical treatment. At her own request her body was given to a medical school, after a funeral Mass attended only by the sisters. Her community announced her death on X. The present Bishop of Niigata, Paul Daisuke Narui, told OSV News he had no plan to publish a statement on her passing.

A further message that she reported in 2019 was publicised by a radio station. No Church judgment on it could be found, and nobody should treat it as approved.

Bishop Ito included the three messages in his letter, in the English translation we have, and EWTN prints a similar one. The original is Japanese. They are given here in short form, on purpose.

How to read the warnings

• There is no prediction here. The messages give no date, no place and no list of events to watch for. Nobody may use them to fix a date or to say that some disaster today “is” what Akita meant. Only the Father knows the day and the hour (Matthew 24:36; CCC 1040).
• The warning is conditional. Bishop Ito himself says so: the message is “based on the condition” that people do not repent. Such warnings in Scripture exist so that they need not come true, as with Jonah at Nineveh (Jonah 3).
• The bishop heard a mother. He called it a serious warning, and said one feels in it the maternal love of Our Lady, in her sadness for the loss of souls. Sadness, not threat, is its centre.
• God is not to be feared as a tyrant. English versions speak of the Father's anger, and of Mary holding it back. That language must be read with the whole faith. The Father sent his Son out of love (John 3:16). He does not need to be persuaded by Mary to have mercy. Christ's one sacrifice is the source of all salvation, and Mary's prayer depends entirely on it.
• Mary never replaces Christ. Some lines, read alone, could seem to make Mary the only help. Christ is the one mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), and her motherly role “in no way obscures” this (CCC 970).
• Mercy has no limit for the repentant. Another harsh line speaks of a time without pardon. The Church teaches that there is no offence, however serious, that she cannot forgive (CCC 982). No private message changes this.
• Love for the Church stays. The lines about bishops and priests in conflict must not be used to attack any Pope, bishop or priest. The message itself asks for prayer for them. The answer it asks is the Rosary, not suspicion.

So if the message frightens you, set it down. You are not bound to it. Go to confession, say your Rosary, and trust God. That is all Akita asks in any case.

What can be confirmed: the bishop's letter

The pastoral letter of Easter Sunday, 22 April 1984, is published in English, from a book by Francis Mutsuo Fukushima. The Japanese original was not checked here. In the letter Bishop Ito, on retiring, gives this history:

He adds that even a favourable judgment from Rome would concern only a private revelation, which nobody is bound to believe.

What is only reported: later statements

The following come from secondary reports. We could not read the original magazines ourselves.

What cannot be confirmed

• “Rome approved Akita in 1988.” Devotional writings say Cardinal Ratzinger gave a “definitive judgment” or “officially recognised” the events. EWTN, itself sympathetic, says that “no ecclesiastical decree appears to exist”.
• “Cardinal Ratzinger said Akita and Fatima are the same.” The former ambassador Howard Dee reported private assurances of this kind. They are one man's report of a private conversation, and no source from the Holy See supports it.
• Any act of the Holy See against Akita. Apart from the 1981 letter known from Bishop Ito, no published condemnation could be found. Nor could we find a ruling by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on Akita under the 2024 norms, up to the date of this page.
• The position of later bishops of Niigata. No formal withdrawal of Bishop Ito's letter was found, nor a formal renewal of it.

So what is the honest position?

Bishop Ito's permission for veneration in his diocese was never publicly withdrawn. EWTN concludes from this that it remains in effect. The Holy See has neither confirmed it nor overturned it in any published act. Serious voices in Japan and in the nunciature have spoken coolly of it. Catholics may pray at Akita and may also, in good conscience, set it aside. The right words are “approved locally by Bishop Ito, awaiting a judgment of the Holy See that has never been published”. It is not accurate to say “approved by the Vatican”.

A note on the Lady of All Nations

The statue at Akita follows the image of the “Lady of All Nations” from reported apparitions in Amsterdam (1945 to 1959). On 11 July 2024 the Dicastery published a decision of 1974, approved by St Paul VI, judging those Amsterdam events not to be supernatural. This decision is about Amsterdam. It does not mention Akita, and it says nothing about this statue or the events there.

Healings and the seer

Two healings are cited by Bishop Ito, as above. No separate Church judgment of them as miracles could be found. No cause for the beatification of Sister Agnes could be found. No Pope is recorded as having visited.

• Conversions and return to the Church. Bishop Ito names Yoichi Imatani, who asked for baptism after seeing the tears; a Catholic who came back after decades away; and a woman who gave her means to found two small mission stations.
• Prayer for priests. The most repeated request of the messages is the Rosary for the Pope, bishops and priests.
• Pilgrims. EWTN News reports about 7,000 a year since 2017. It is a small place, in a land where Catholics are very few.
• Dialogue of culture. The chapel, rebuilt in 2002, is in traditional Japanese wooden style and made by temple carpenters. The statue itself is the work of a Japanese carver.
• The Eucharist at the centre. The first sign was at the tabernacle, the healing came at Benediction, and the community's prayer is to the Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist.

The convent is about 8 kilometres from central Akita, in the north of Honshu. Its own website says to take the bus from the West Exit of Akita Station, towards Akita Onsen or Nibetsu Resort Park, about 20 minutes to the Yuzawa stop, then walk uphill about 10 minutes. A taxi takes about 20 minutes.

This is a working convent and not a parish. Silence is asked in the church, and photography inside is forbidden. Visiting hours vary, and the grounds have closed for parts of the summer, so please confirm with the community before you travel (seitaihoshikai.com). The garden of Mary is open for anyone who wishes to pray.