Thomas Aquino Manyo Maeda

Thomas Aquino Manyo Maeda was born on 3 March 1949 in Tsuwasaki, Kami-Goto, in Nagasaki Prefecture. His family history reaches back to the hidden Christians of the Goto Islands: his great-grandfather was persecuted in the early Meiji era, and his mother was exposed to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki at the age of 19. After studies at the Nanzan Lyceum in Nagasaki, he entered the Saint Sulpice Major Seminary in Fukuoka and was ordained a priest on 19 March 1975 for the Diocese of Nagasaki. He served as parish vicar and parish priest, edited the diocesan bulletin, headed the diocesan Commission for Social Communications, and was secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan from 2006 until his episcopal appointment; he later served as the conference's vice president from 2016 to 2022.

On 13 June 2011 Benedict XVI appointed him Bishop of Hiroshima, and he received episcopal consecration on 23 September 2011. In Hiroshima he joined the peace movement, prayed each 6 August for the victims of the atomic bombing, and worked for the beatification of the hidden Christians exiled to Tsuwano, some 3,400 Nagasaki Christians deported across Japan in the nineteenth century, more than 600 of whom died. On 20 August 2014 Pope Francis appointed him Archbishop of Osaka. He pressed for a papal visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to strengthen the call for nuclear abolition, and Pope Francis made that visit in November 2019.

Pope Francis created him a cardinal in the consistory of 28 June 2018, assigning him the title of Santa Pudenziana; he is a member of the Dicastery for Evangelization. On 15 August 2023, when the Archdiocese of Osaka and the Diocese of Takamatsu were united as the new Archdiocese of Osaka–Takamatsu, he became its first metropolitan archbishop. He participated as a cardinal elector in the 2025 conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV.