Biography
Francis Kichi
About Francis Kichi
Francis Kichi was a Japanese lay Christian remembered among the twenty-six people killed at Nagasaki in 1597. The Catholic parish at Koshien identifies him as a carpenter from Ise who lived near the Franciscan house in Kyoto. It says he received baptism from the missionary Peter Baptist only months before the arrests. His story belongs to the first group of Japanese martyrs later canonized, rather than to the much larger group beatified for deaths in the seventeenth century.
Kichi was not on the first list of people ordered to be taken from Kyoto. In the parish account he tried to join the imprisoned Christians, then continued to follow the procession as it moved west. The narrative describes his persistence and eventual detention. Such details are part of a local retelling and should be read with awareness of their devotional shape; they still preserve the distinctive point that he joined the group after the initial arrests. The New Catholic Encyclopedia likewise lists a carpenter Francis who was added to the condemned group.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia lists another Francis from Miyako who was a physician and had been Christian about a year. Kichi belongs to the latter description.
The twenty-six were taken to Nagasaki and executed on 5 February 1597. Catholic liturgical remembrance places the group’s memorial on 6 February. The New Catholic Encyclopedia records their beatification in 1627 and canonization by Pius IX in 1862.
Koshien parish names Francis Kichi as its patron.
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