Updated
(LifeSiteNews) — The Japanese nun who gave the world messages attributed to Our Lady of Akita has died.
Sister Agnes Sasagawa, who reported Marian apparitions and locutions in her convent just outside Akita, Japan, was 93 when she died on Thursday, August 15, 2024, the Solemnity of the Assumption.
Sister Agnes’ religious order, the Handmaids of the Holy Eucharist, released the news today, saying that their most celebrated sister died around 1:40 p.m. (Japan time). They wrote:
Sister Agnes Sasakawa Katsu, who had been under medical care for some time, passed away yesterday at the age of 93.
At her request, her body was donated to the Medical College, and the funeral Mass was held at the Headquarters Convent with only the members present. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to you all for the kindness you showed her during her life.
かねて療養中だったアグネス笹川カツ姉妹が老衰により昨日天に召されました。93歳でした。
本人の希望で医大に献体となり、葬儀ミサも会員のみで本部修道院で捧げられました。皆様より生前賜りましたご厚意に深く感謝申し上げます。
聖体奉仕会 pic.twitter.com/iMRb7LNdeo— ぴょん（聖体奉仕会） (@seitai_hoshikai) August 16, 2024
Sister Agnes was – and is – famous among Catholics as the Seer of Our Lady of Akita, one of the titles for the Blessed Virgin Mary, having reported that she received messages from Our Lady on July 6, August 3, and October 13, 1973. In 2019, there were reports that Sister Agnes had received another message from heaven.
In 1973, Sister Agnes related that she was promised in the first message (July 6) that the deafness from which she was suffering would be healed, and she was asked to pray “very much” for the Pope (then Paul VI), bishops, and priests.
In the second (August 3), Sister Agnes was purportedly told that “the Heavenly Father [was] preparing to inflict a great chastisement on all mankind,” which could be ameliorated by “prayer, penance and courageous sacrifices.”
The third message (October 13) elaborated on the coming punishment in language that conveyed to many the threat of a nuclear holocaust: “Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead.”
Sister Agnes also reported that she was told that the “work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops.”
“The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres… churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises, and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord,” the second message continued.
Sister Agnes reported that these calamities could be averted through the recitation of the Rosary, and only those who put their trust in Our Lady of Akita would be saved from them.
The fourth message, which Sister Agnes reportedly received on October 6, 2019, came from an angel who told her “to cover [herself] in ashes,” and pray a penitential Rosary every day.
The first three messages were reportedly spoken to Sister Agnes at Seitai Hoshikai, the convent of the Handmaids of the Holy Eucharist, in a semi-rural area just outside Akita. The site of the voice was a three-foot-high statue of Our Lady of Akita, carved by a local sculptor in 1963 from a piece of katsura tree. According to the sisters, a wound formed on one of the hands of the statue on the same day Sister Agnes heard the first message. The statue reportedly bled from this wound on four other occasions before it disappeared. Thereafter, the statue seemed to sweat and then, two years later, to cry. The statue shed tears 101 times between 1975 and 1982, and this phenomenon was seen by thousands of witnesses and shown on Japanese television.
According to reports, Sister Agnes was a 42-year-old novice who had been in the convent for only two months before she heard the first locution, and she had lost her hearing mere months before she entered in May 1973. EWTN has reported that her miraculous experiences began on June 12 of that year, when she saw light streaming from the chapel tabernacle, a phenomenon that occurred on the next two days. On June 28, a cross-shaped wound appeared on her left hand; it both hurt and bled.
The first three messages she received were referred to Bishop John Shojiro Ito of Niigata, the local bishop to whom she reported the phenomena. In 1984, Bishop Ito officially declared them to be supernatural and encouraged devotion to Our Lady of Akita.
Deacon Nick Donnelly, who broke the news of Sister Agnes’ death to the English-speaking world over X (formerly Twitter), believes that the message of Akita is more pertinent than ever.
“The past sixty years, and especially the past eleven years under Pope Francis, have been a time of painful confusion and disorientation for faithful Catholics,” he told LifeSiteNews by email.
“Why is God allowing His Church to be plagued by unfaithful clergy, some in the highest positions in the Church, who spread heresies and encourage immorality?” Deacon Donnelly rhetorically asked.
“Our Lady’s messages to Sister Agnes Sasagawa at Akita, during the early days of the implementation of Vatican II, don’t explain why these evils are being inflicted on the Church, but reassure us that they are under God’s watchful providence. Everything that Our Lady warned would happen has occurred — the communion of the Catholic Church has been fractured by heretical bishops, veneration of Our Lady has been insidiously undermined, churches and sanctuaries have been ruined by Novus Ordo ‘re-ordering’, vocations to the consecrated life have collapsed, and the majority of the hierarchy compromise with the secular values of the world.”
Donnelly believes that, these evils having come to pass, we can “expect to face the consequences — God’s punishment on a global scale greater than the flood.”
“There is nothing we can do to stop divine punishment,” he added, “but just as Noah was instructed to build the Ark, Our Lady has instructed us to construct a spiritual ‘ark’ through repentance, praying the rosary, and making acts of reparation. It won’t physically save us, but it will get as many to heaven as possible.”