An international fraternity in Nagasaki that could be a living witness to peace: it was in 2010 when the then Minister General Br José Rodríguez Carballo had this inspiration while visiting the Franciscan Province of the Holy Martyrs of Japan. In a place that witnessed death and destruction due to the atomic bombing in 1945, the Minister thought of the opportunity to build an international community that could become a proclamation of peace itself, that could bear witness to what it means to live in peace.

Nagasaki is a place that still retains traces of the horror caused by the atomic bomb, which killed thousands of people. “One of the friars of the Nagasaki friary was nine years old when the event took place,” says Brother Albert, “and is, therefore, a living witness of what happened in this genocide”. The dropping of the atomic bomb is not the only event of suffering that took place there. In the period between the 16th and 19th centuries, Nagasaki was, in fact, a place of severe persecution and martyrdom