St. Francis Xavier Memorial Church

St. Francis Xavier Memorial Church is a beautiful green church located in Hirado, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan.

This church was built for 1931. It is located on a hill and becomes a symbolic view of Hirado with Temple.

Church facade.
Built in 1931, the Xavier Memorial Church is surrounded by temples and the resulting view of the church is typical of Hirado in the way it brings together both eastern and western culture.

The church also overflows with a sense of art that can be felt in its exotic sculptures and beautiful stained glass windows.

Lourdes Grotto.
The Lourdes grotto is on the right-hand side before going up the stairs.

A Lourdes grotto is a replica of the grotto where the Lourdes apparitions occurred in 1858, in the town of Lourdes in France, now part of the sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Some Lourdes grottos are almost identical reproductions of the scene of the apparitions, with statues of Our Lady of Lourdes and Bernadette Soubirous in a natural or artificial cave, while others may differ from the original in size, shape or style.
See more at Lourdes grotto - Wikipedia.

Hirado martyrs memorial monument.

Statue of St. Francis Xavier.
Francis Xavier, SJ, venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Spanish Catholic missionary and saint who was a co-founder of the Society of Jesus.

Born in the town of Xavier, Spain, he was a companion of Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, Paris in 1534.
He led an extensive mission into Asia, mainly the Portuguese Empire in the East, and was influential in evangelisation work, most notably in early modern India.
Francis Xavier devoted much of his life to missions in Asia, mainly in four centres: Malacca, Amboina and Ternate (in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia), Japan, and off-shore China.
Japan was particularly attractive because of its culture. For him, these areas were interconnected; they could not be evangelised separately.