AsiaNews: Welcomed in Japan 28 years ago after fleeing with his family from South Vietnam, today the 36-year old priest Nguyen Quang Thuan “is giving back ” to the country that took him in by devoting psychological help to those who were evacuated from their homes in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster of March 2011.
They are people housed in temporary accommodation in the city of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, isolated within their shelters, to the point that a meeting place has been ste up for them called “outreach cafe”.
The Vietnamese priest goes there every day: he prays for displaced people, listens to them, tries to help them out of their isolation, to socialize. Don Thuan is in charge of 10 temporary housing complexes: Together with volunteers from the Catholic church they visit and chat with residents. “Evacuees – he said – are worried about whether they will be able to go home in the future. I want them to be positive about their lives, even if it’s just a little”. Read more here.
