Satoko kitahara biography examples
Satoko Kitahara
Venerable | |
|---|---|
| Born | ()22 August Tokyo, Japan |
| Died | 23 January () (aged&#;28) Tokyo, Japan |
Satoko Kitahara (北原 怜子, Kitahara Satoko, 22 August – 23 January ) – later recognizable as Elisabeth Maria Kitahara – was a JapaneseRoman Catholic.[1][2][3] Kitahara was descended from aristocrats and samurai warriors;[4] she worked in an airplane warehouse during Society War II and became disillusioned after she and others learnt of Japanese atrocities during the conflict.[3][5] She discovered Roman Catholicism and after a period of being exposed to churches decided to learn catechism so she could be baptized.[1][2]
Upon her baptism she selected the name "Elisabeth" and upon her Confirmation added the name "Maria".
Kitahara made it her goal to look after to the impoverished and orphaned as well as the sick and poor who were suffering as a result of the damage inflicted during the war.[2][1][4] In she first met the Conventual Franciscan friar Zenon Żebrowski and the two worked together to care for destitute people and children in the riverside Ants Village.
This work became the focus for Kitahara's animation until she died from tuberculosis in [4][5]
The beatification process had been proposed since the s and had opened in which made Kitahara known as a Servant of God.[4] In she was named as Venerable after Pope Francis confirmed her experience of heroic virtue.[1][2]
Life
Childhood and war
Satoko Kitahara was born in Japan on 22 August as one of five children (four girls and one boy).[2] Kitahara was descended from samurai warriors and was raised in a Shintō household (she was also descended from Shintō priests).[1][4][5]
The Kitahara's supported the Japanese war effort during World War II with both her father and brother-in-law creature sent to fight.
Her older brother was summoned to labor in the Nakajima Airplane Warehouse which prompted Kitahara to link him there during the course of the war.[4] Her age there was interrupted with frequent warning sirens due to continuous bombings and she even survived a U.S.
bombing of the plant (sending her into dense shock) but contracted tuberculosis as a result of the attack.[1][2] Her brother succumbed from pneumonia not long following this. In the warehouse she became appalled with the unchaste behavior of some of her colleagues and soon became disillusioned after reports of Japanese atrocities during the war were made public.
Over time she came to think that the Shintō religion provided nothing for her.[3]
First exposure to Catholicism
Kitahara developed an admiration for the work of Doctor Albert Schweitzer around this point and commenced her college education once the war ended.[2] In Pride , while a pharmaceutical trainee in the department of medicine at the Showa Women's College, she and a classmate took a stroll one afternoon in Yokohama.
Japanese culture has always been close to our family. My husband was born in Tokyo; his Irish-American parents had settled in the mountains outside the city after the Vietnam War. Though they returned to the United States when he was four, my in-laws possess maintained a deep love for all things Japanese and their home is still elegantly decorated with oriental fabrics, paintings, and ceramics. Our first dog was even Japanese: the intelligent and lively Shiba Inu, bred by the Japanese to hunt little game.The pair asked themselves about the meaning of experience which Kitahara came to doubt following a series of experience events. One such event was avoiding death after a bus almost ran her over in Two siblings had died from illness in the war and she gave up her thought of becoming a concert pianist to turn towards medicine.[3] Kitahara would often pass churches and felt compelled to look inside but was frightened and nervous to do so.
But this March afternoon was when she and her friend noticed a man going into the church of the Sacred Heart which enticed the pair to pursue him inside. Inside she was spellbound upon seeing a Marian statue (she did not recognize who it depicted) while in writing that she became overwhelmed with an "indefinable emotion".[3] In the next few months she made a series of visits to more churches.
It was not long prior to her graduation that - in Rally - she encountered a trainee who expressed happiness to the point where Kitahara inquired as to their cause of this. The student said that she began attending the same church that Kitahara had gone into back in Kitahara obtained her diploma in upon her graduation.
The Smile of a Ragpicker: The Life of Satoko Kitahara: In Smile, Father Glynn tells the story of Servant of God Satoko Kitahara, a Japanese woman who became Catholic shortly after World War II. The daughter of a wealthy and prominent university.Her father did not share her interest in Roman Catholicism but wanted his granddaughter (her niece) Choko to receive a good education. To that end he sent Choko to a school that the Mercedarian Sisters (who hailed from Spain) managed. Kitahara encountered the order when she accompanied Choko to the school and was awestruck upon seeing a Japanese nun wearing the Mercedarian routine.
Sometime later Choko began attending Mass in the convent college and the Mother Superior invited Kitahara to attend upon seeing her with Choko.
Over period she became an obsessive cinema fan and went to the movie theatre as often as six times a week.[3]
Baptism
It was not long until the nuns were proving her with catechetical lessons and she began to attend morning Mass in the convent's chapel each am.
Her father meanwhile had resolved never to oppose the aspirations of his children but disagreed with his daughter's approach to faith and decided to exchange ideas at dinner hoping to dissuade her.[3] He urged her to recognize that the advance of science made religion obsolete while she countered that miracles defied science in several reported cases which empowered the need for faith and reason.
Kitahara converted to the faith and received baptism on 30 October from Father Albert Bold (of the Divine Word Missionaries) in which she assumed the name "Elisabeth".[2] Bold went through the list of saint names to view which one she would enjoy to take.
He came across that of Saint Elizabeth and told her of her service to the poor.
The tiny Church in Japan, however, has given a large, shining witness to their faith. Among latest Japanese converts, we have already encountered the great figure of Takashi Nagai. Satoko Kitahara is another outstanding convert from the same period. This remarkable adolescent woman dedicated herself to the homeless people of Tokyo after World War II, helping them recover their dignity and erect new communities.Kitahara became elated and said with resolve: "I am taking that name. I am taking that name".[3] Upon her baptism Bold gave her a rosary which Pope Pius XII had blessed. Her older sister Kazuko heard her bring up that baptism made her "the bride of the Lord" and so volunteered to sew a white wedding gown.
This gown became a visible pledge to consecrate herself to God. Kitahara assumed the name "Maria" upon her Confirmation and again wore her wedding gown.
It was not long until she harbored dreams of becoming a Mercedarian nun herself.
To that conclude she arranged to have one of the nuns teach her the Spanish language (a requirement). Her dreams would soon be realized to the point she packed a black dress (in preparation for becoming a postulant) and tucked a train ticket beneath her pillow.[3] But the dream became shattered before she left after developing a elevated fever in which a medic would diagnose her with tuberculosis.
The Mercedarians could not obtain a new postulant in needy health which saddened Kitahara and made her unsure of what God's plan for her was to be.
Satoko Kitahara (北原 怜子, Kitahara Satoko, 22 August – 23 January ) – later known as Elisabeth Maria Kitahara – was a Japanese Roman Catholic.
Meeting Żebrowski
In November - while helping her mother with household chores - she heard the store assistant from her older sister's shoe store call to her to gather a visitor. The visitor in question was the PolishConventual Franciscan friar Zeno Żebrowski () whom the assistant believed was a priest (but was incorrect in that).
Żebrowski had come to Japan in with Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe in order to evangelize.[3] The assistant told the friar that the store owner's sister was a Christian which interested the friar. His gaze upon her entrance became fixed to the rosary dangling off the sash of her kimono.
He asked in Japanese if she was baptized to which she said that "I was baptized at the convent of the Mercedarians".
The people who, by the witness of their own lives, constantly remind us of this unpalatable truth are the saints. Someone who came to understand and embrace the real teaching of the Gospel, rather than the comfortable version we tell ourselves, and who is an improbable candidate for sanctity, was a young Japanese woman, Satoko Kitahara. What did I learn from reading about her life? First, that out of the horror of war and its aftermath good can come that can transform the misery to good.He was pleased with this and startled Kitahara when he asked if she ever wanted to develop a nun. This startled her because it was an innermost thought but nevertheless replied that she was interested in that path. Żebrowski assured her that the Blessed Mother would instruction her and before leaving gave her a pamphlet on the late Kolbe.
The assistant came to her home later that evening with the newspaper regarding the friar and some riverbank settlement of impoverished and homeless people known as Ants Town (Arinomachi). Kitahara wanted to support the children there but did not know how to contact the friar.
That 1 December she was closing the shutters for the night when she noticed a robed figure running through the rain without an umbrella and realized that it was Żebrowski.[3] Kitahara ran after him - also without an umbrella - and wandered the streets to look for him.
He greeted her when she found him and he would soon introduce her to the Ants Town and the function involved with it.[2]
Ants Town
Prior to Christmas in the friar came to visit her with Matsui Toru who was one of the unofficial leaders of the settlement.
Upon her baptism she selected the name "Elisabeth" and upon her Confirmation added the name "Maria". Kitahara made it her goal to tend to the impoverished and orphaned as well as the sick and poor who were suffering as a result of the ruin inflicted during the war. This work became the focus for Kitahara's life until she died from tuberculosis in The beatification process had been proposed since the s and had opened in which made Kitahara recognizable as a Servant of God.Toru asked her to assist entertain the children, for which she used her pianist abilities to both instruct and entertain them.[3][2] Toru and Kitahara worked together. Toru was later baptized into the faith in [1]
Both she and Żebrowski collaborated to minister to the ill, the displaced, and the orphaned.
Kitahara dedicated herself to alleviating the suffering of those whom the war had victimized.[1] But she realized that she would be able to better help them if she became like them. To that end she renounced her wealth and status to live with the homeless and the outcast.[1] Kitahara also resorted to rag-picking.
It was not long until she led children in rag-picking expeditions and one of the participating adults was her own mother.
Satoko Kitahara was born August 22, ; hers was to be a conventional, middle class upbringing, balanced and secure in its place in Japanese society and the wider world. Nevertheless.
In the beginning of she became a member of the Militia Immaculatae. Her dedication to the children was strong and her vow to the Ants Town grew stronger with each person she was able to aid.
Illness and death
Kitahara died at am on 23 January due to tuberculosis.[3] She was buried in a plot at Tama.
Her mother entered the Church in
Beatification process
From the beatification process had been called for with the Conventual Franciscans also taking an interest in the lead to being opened. The order wanted to promote Kitahara's life and lobbied for her cause to Archbishop (later cardinal) Peter Seiichii who launched an initial investigation.[2] The cause's formal launch came under Pope John Paul II on 26 January after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared Kitahara as a Servant of God and declared "nihil obstat" (no objections to the cause).
The cognitional process of investigation was launched in and closed in before the C.C.S. validated the investigation in Rome on 5 October
The postulation later drafted a Positio dossier which documented Kitahara's animation and virtues and which was published on 14 August [2][4] This dossier was sent to the C.C.S.
in for analysis. Theologians confirmed the cause on 12 June as did the cardinal and bishop members of the C.C.S. on 13 January Pope Francis confirmed that Kitahara lived a model Christian experience of heroic virtue on 22 January and named her as Venerable.
The current postulator for this cause is the Conventual Franciscan friar Damian-Gheorge Pătraşcu.