Tokyo, Japan, Oct 30, 2019 / 12:02 pm
Pope Francis' three-day visit to Japan in November will include a meeting with people affected by the country's "triple disaster," when a major earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011 triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
An estimated 19,000 people died and 150,000 were displaced by the tsunami, which was triggered by a magnitude-9 earthquake under the ocean off the coast of Japan. In the wake of the nuclear disaster that followed, considered the worst since Chernobyl in 1986, another approximately 150,000 people were displaced in mandatory evacuations. Many of these people have not returned home.
Francis' meeting with victims will take place Nov. 25 at the Bellesalle Hanzomon event center in Tokyo.
Following in the footsteps of Pope St. John Paul II, who traveled to Japan in 1981, Francis will also make stops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, under the theme "Protect all life."