– later known as Elisabeth Maria Kitahara – was a Japanese Roman Catholic. Kitahara was descended from aristocrats and samurai warriors; she worked in an airplane warehouse during World War II and became disillusioned after she and others learnt of Japanese atrocities during the conflict. She discovered Roman Catholicism and after a period of being exposed to churches decided to learn catechism so she could be baptized.
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 damage inflicted during the war. In 1950 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 life until she died from tuberculosis in 1958.
The beatification process had been proposed since the 1970s and had opened in 1981 which made Kitahara known as a Servant of God. In 2015 she was named as Venerable after Pope Francis confirmed her life of heroic virtue.
Life
Childhood and war
Satoko Kitahara was born in Japan on 22 August 1929 as one of five children (four girls and one boy). Kitahara was descended from samurai warriors and was raised in a Shintō household (she was also descended from Shintō priests).
The Kitahara's supported the Japanese war effort during World War II with both her father and brother-in-law being sent to fight. Her older brother was summoned to work in the Nakajima Airplane Warehouse which prompted Kitahara to join him there during the course of the war. Her time 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 deep shock) but contracted tuberculosis as a result of the attack. 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 dissolusioned after reports of Japanese atrocities during the war were made public. Over time she came to believe that the Shintō religion provided nothing for her.
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. In March 1948, while a pharmaceutical student in the department of medicine at the Showa Women's College, she and a classmate took a stroll one afternoon in Yokohama. The pair asked themselves about the meaning of life which Kitahara came to question following a series of life events. One such event was avoiding death after a bus almost ran her over in 1935. Two siblings had died from illness in the war and she gave up her idea of becoming a concert pianist to turn towards medicine. 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 follow him inside. Inside she was spellbound upon seeing a Marian statue (she did not know who it depicted) while in 1950 writing that she became overwhelmed with an "indefinable emotion". In the next few months she made a series of visits to more churches.
It was not long prior to her graduation that - in March 1949 - she encountered a student 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 1948. Kitahara obtained her diploma in 1949 upon her graduation. 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 habit. Sometime later Choko began attending Mass in the convent school and the Mother Superior invited Kitahara to attend upon seeing her with Choko.
Over time she became an obsessive cinema fan and went to the movie theatre as often as six times a week.