Here is a follow up on that post.
Father Aguilar and I met with his superior Father Miazaki who was in charge of the project to build the chapel on Unzen. We showed him the designs. He had already been contacted by a friend of his on Unzen who was a Christian hotel owner who said they wanted to sponsor the windows. Father Miazaki had told him that he flatly refused their offer and only because his friend pleaded with him to at least look at the designs and hear us out, that he granted us a 15 minute audience. We met with him an the audience stretched to 50 minutes. In the end he revealed to us that he did not want the hotel people to use the chapel for weddings and commercial purposes. Father Aguilar argued that the chapel would be seen by people from around the world as a graphic depiction of what had gone on there, and so what if the local resorts transported a few brides and grooms there for their western weddings conducted by the local Catholic Priest.
Here is the follow up excerpt a year later when I visited after the church was finished.
I
was eager to show Aguilar a small window I had made for the Center from one of
the Unzen designs—The Trek From Nagasaki to Unzen. I had tried to
make it resemble a sumie scroll.
“Please
accept this for your Center,” I said.
He
eagerly held it up to the window to catch the full light.
“What
is happening up there now? Is it finished?”
He
shook his head sadly, ‘Yes, it is finished with a chain upon the front door.
The hotel owners took delivery of their coach for which they had paid $45,000
plus the cost of shipping and the cost of a team of white horses. But the
chapel has stood, unused. It is the center of a local controversy. It remains
locked. The priest in charge will not permit it to be used for any non-Catholic
purpose. No weddings, no tourism is permitted. Today that fancy coach sits in
the lobby of one of the hotels, and the imitation stained glass is
uninteresting.”
“Kawai so,
ne (Too bad right)?”
“So
ne,” he said.
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