Sr Agnes Sasagawa Sr Agnes Sasagawa, a Japanese nun whose purported visions of the Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Akita included stark warnings for humanity and instructions to pray the rosary and repent of sin, died August 15 at age 93. Sr Sasagawa was a convert from Buddhism.
A parish priest in Akita, Japan, confirmed to CNA by phone that Sr Sasagawa had died on August 15.
The order to which Sr Sasagawa belonged, the Institute of the Handmaids of the Holy Eucharist, announced that Sr Sasagawa, who had been “undergoing medical treatment for some time”, died on the feast of the Assumption of Mary. She famously received a purported series of messages from Mary and witnessed other supernatural phenomena beginning 50 years ago.
The local bishop, John Shojiro Ito of Niigata, who founded Sr Sasagawa’s order and died in 1993, gave the faithful in his diocese permission to venerate Our Lady of Akita in April 1984 after eight years of investigation, finding that her messages contain “nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine or morals”.