KARAFUTO, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE OF. - On the island of Sakhalin, erected by apostolic brief on 21 May 1938 by division of the vicariate of Sapporo.

Beginning in 1907 a priest of the diocese of Hakodate, today's Sendai, visited annually the Polish and Japanese Catholics who were on the island of Sakhalin. In 1912 the first church was built in the district of Toyohara. The mission, first entrusted to the Franciscans of the Polish province of the Immaculate Conception, in 1941, with the establishment of an exclusively native hierarchy in Japan, passed to an apostolic administrator from the local secular clergy. It has an area of 36,000 sq. km. and a population of 331,949 Japanese, with a few thousand Koreans and about two thousand aborigines of Ainu stock.

The number of Catholics is about 557, with 33 catechumens, 3 foreign priests and one native, one lay brother and 3 catechists. Primary stations 3; secondary 5; one church and 2 chapels. Occupied by Russian soldiers on 15 Aug. 1945, K. was forcibly evacuated by the missionaries and the faithful on 17 May 1948.

Bibliography

BIBL.: MC, 1950, pp. 405.

Edoardo Pecoraro

@incollection{ec7_karafuto_prefettura_apostolica, author = {Pecoraio, Edoardo}, title = {Karafuto, prefettura apostolica di}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {655--656}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/karafuto-prefettura-apostolica-di} }

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Karafuto, Apostolic Prefecture of

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