HIROSHIMA -- It's not every teenager who can get a chance to invite the pope to visit their home city. But Koharu Matsuda is not your typical teenager, and her city holds a special place in world history.
So it will be with great anticipation that Matsuda will get to see Pope Francis again on Sunday in Hiroshima, after having met him at the Vatican in June.
Matsuda, 17, a second-year student at Hiroshima University High School, is heavily involved in the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons in her role as a high school peace ambassador.
Meeting the pope face-to-face in June, Matsuda invited him to visit the site of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"I would like the pope to convey in his own words to the world what he feels after seeing the atomic bombing sites," Matsuda said.
High school peace ambassadors are involved in a campaign to collect signatures against nuclear weapons, which are continually delivered to the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva. Matsuda has been engaged in the program since her third year of junior high school.
In her first year of high school, she met with atomic bomb survivor Sakue Shimohira, 84, in Nagasaki. "The atomic bombing victims cannot live or die like normal human beings," Shimohira told her, words which greatly moved her and steeled her determination to continue the petitioning program. In March this year, she was selected as the 22nd high school peace ambassador.
In June, the committee that dispatches peace ambassadors approached Matsuda about joining in a general audience with Pope Francis. When she heard that her role would be to invite the pope to visit the atomic bombing sites, she replied, "That's too heavy a responsibility."
Still, filled with anxiety, she made the trip to the Vatican.
The audience with the pope was held in St. Peter's Square. Holding a photo of the Atomic Bomb Dome, she explained to the pontiff about her activities as a peace ambassador, but was so nervous she could not get the words out very well.
But she managed to hand him a note she had written in English in her hotel room that expressed her desire that he visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As they spoke, the pope continually nodded his head and he told her to keep up her activities without forgetting the will of atomic bomb victims. She said he has greatly encouraged her.
Three months after her visit, it was officially announced in September that the pope would visit the atomic bombing sites. The pope will address a gathering in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in the evening on Sunday.
"I hope the message reaches people throughout the world, and should become an opportunity for rethinking the need for nuclear weapons," said Matsuda, looking forward to personally seeing the pope deliver a message of peace.
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