Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi

Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, S.V.D. (; born 1 November 1958) is a Japanese Catholic prelate who has served as Archbishop of Tokyo since 2017 and president of Caritas Internationalis since May 2023. He was Bishop of Niigata from 2004 to 2017. He previously worked as a missionary in Ghana. He is a member of the Divine Word Missionaries.

Kikuchi has served as president of Caritas Japan and Caritas Asia, as well as a member of the Representative Council of Caritas Internationalis. He was made a cardinal in 2024 by Pope Francis.

Biography Kikuchi Isao was born in Iwate on 1 November 1958. He did additional studies at the Spiritual Institute of Sacred Heart in Melbourne. He returned to Japan and served his order as formator, vice prefect of novices, and vocations director for a year and then as its provincial councilor from 1994 to 1999, taking on several additional roles. Beginning in 1994 he also began teaching at Nanzan University and became a member of the International Aid Committee of the Japanese Bishops Conference. He became coordinator of his order's Office of Justice and Peace for Asia in 1996. He became a member of Caritas Japan in 1998 and began representing the Japanese bishops at international conferences in 1998. He received his episcopal consecration on 20 September

On 13 September 2014, Pope Francis named him a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

He attended the beatification for Takayama Ukon in Osaka in 2017 and proposed the late samurai as "a model for all" since he had "renounced privileges and wealth for the faith".

Pope Francis appointed Kikuchi Archbishop of Tokyo on 25 October 2017. Kikuchi was installed there on 16 December 2017.

He has been a member of the Representative Council of Caritas International and headed Caritas Asia from 2011 to 2019.

In the summer of 2021, when Japan had declared its fourth state of emergency because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kikuchi canceled plans for his parishes to provide services to participants and support staff of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. He announced that those visiting Tokyo for the games "will be requested to refrain from visiting churches".

Kikuchi is president of the Japanese Bishops Conference and secretary general of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences.

On 6 October 2024, Pope Francis announced that he planned to make Kikuchi a cardinal on 8 December, a date that was later changed to 7 December. Kikuchi praised Francis for "this symbolic gesture of appointing number of cardinals from the challenging mission areas in Asia".

On 7 December 2024, Pope Francis made him a cardinal, assigning him as a member of the order of cardinal priests the title of San Giovanni Leonardi.

He participated as a cardinal elector in the 2025 papal conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV.

Positions North Korea Kikuchi has been a staunch advocate for dialogue in relation to North Korea's nuclear program and their diplomatic crisis with the United States of America. In August 2017 he expressed his hope that the Japanese government would undertake "an initiative of dialogue that involves all the sides concerned in this crisis to find a diplomatic solution".

He also asserted that dialogue remains "the only solution to peaceful coexistence in this part of Asia". He also accused "new political leaders" of exploiting the confrontation for their own political purposes and called for renewed negotiations.

Kikuchi spoke on evangelization during the visit of Cardinal Fernando Filoni to Japan in September 2017 and expressed his hope that evangelization efforts on the part of the faithful would be "humble" but bold and direct. The bishop said that in the piece that it was the role of all Christians in the protection and development of the environment with the proper allocation of resources on an equal level. He further asserted that "we must act to protect the lives of future generations" if "environmental degradation" went unchecked and too far. He further elaborated that the encyclical provided a "solid foundation" to be built upon for committing oneself to environmental protection and activism.