News reached the Church in Rome. Christovao Ferreira, sent to Japan by the Society of Jesus in Portugal, after undergoing the torture of ‘the pit’ at Nagasaki had apostatized. An experienced missionary held in the highest respect, he had spent thirty-three years in Japan, had occupied the high position of provincial and had been a source of inspiration to priests and faithful alike.

He was a theologian, too, of considerable ability, and in the time of persecution he had secretly made his way into the Kamigata region to pursue his apostolic work. From here the letters he sent to Rome overflowed with a spirit of indomitable courage. It was unthinkable that such a man would betray the faith, however terrible the circumstances in which he was placed. In the Society of Jesus as well as the Church at large, people asked themselves if the whole thing were not just a fictitious report invented by the Dutch or the Japanese.

Not that the Church at Rome was ignorant of the straitened circumstances in which the Japanese mission was situated. Letters from the missionaries had left no room for doubt. From 1587 the regent Hideyoshi, reversing the policy of his predecessor, had initiated a frightful persecution of Christianity. It first began when twenty-six priests and faithful were punished at Nishizaka in Nagasaki; and following on this Christians all over the country were evicted from their households, tortured and cruelly put to death. The Shogun Tokugawa pursued the same policy, ordering the expulsion of all the missionaries from Japan in the year 1614. Reports from the missionaries tell of how on the 6th and 7th October of this same year, seventy priests, both Japanese and foreign, were herded together at Kibachi in Kyushu and forced to board five junks bound for Macao and Manila. Then they sailed into exile. It was rainy that day, and the sea was grey and stormy as the ships drenched by the rain made their way out of the harbor, passed beside the promontory and disappeared beyond the horizon.

Flaunting this severe decree of exile, however, thirty-seven priests refused to abandon their flock and secretly remained hiding in Japan. And Ferreira was one of these underground priests. He continued to inform his superiors by letter of the capture of the missionaries and the Christians, and of the punishment to which they were subjected.