CV NEWS FEED // U.S. Catholics are raising money to send a new cathedral bell to Nagasaki, Japan, that will replace the original bell that was destroyed in the 1945 atomic bombing.
The project is spearheaded by the St. Kateri Institute, a Massachusetts-based organization that was “founded to provide opportunities for people living and studying in northwestern Massachusetts to engage with the Catholic intellectual tradition,” according to its website.
The original bell was one of two that hung in the Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, which was the largest Catholic cathedral in east Asia at the time, according to Catholic News Agency. Though Japanese Catholics were able to salvage one of the bells, the other was beyond repair, leaving one of the cathedral’s bell towers empty for almost 80 years.
James Nolan, a professor of sociology at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, said in the article that 8,500 of the area’s roughly 12,000 Catholics were killed in the Nagasaki bombing. Nolan, the grandson of a chief medical officer at the New Mexico facility that developed the atomic bomb, has spent time researching for a book about Japanese Catholics’ response to the bombing. The idea to donate a bell to Nagasaki Catholics sprang from a conversation with a parishioner at the Urakami Cathedral.
“He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if American Catholics gave us the bell for the left tower?’” Nolan told Catholic News Agency. “I thought that was a wonderful suggestion, and I’ve been working on it since.”
The St. Kateri Institute partnered with a St. Louis foundry to build the bell, which will cost $54,200, Catholic News Agency reported. As of August 24, the Institute has raised roughly $37,000 for the project. U.S. Catholics have promised to additionally pay for the transportation and installation of the bell.
Nagasaki Archbishop Michiaki Nakamura supports the project and hopes to install the bell by August 9, 2025, the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing, according to Nolan, the article said.
