Satoko Kitahara
1929-1958 20th century
Not helping from above but joining: drawing so near as to share the other's condition.
Who was Satoko Kitahara?
Daughter of a Tokyo university professor, descended from samurai, mobilized as a teenager in an aircraft factory, she came out of the war disoriented. Gripped before a statue of the Virgin in a Yokohama church, she was baptized in 1949. Meeting Brother Zeno, a Polish Franciscan, led her to Ants Town, the ragpickers' shantytown on the Sumida river: first a volunteer, she ended up pulling the cart herself and living among them. Tuberculosis took her at twenty-eight; the Church declared her venerable in 2015.
In their own words
To save us, God sent his only Son to become one of us. It hit me now. There was only one way to help those ragpicker children: become a ragpicker like them.
I still remember the first time I went into a Catholic church and saw a statue of the Blessed Virgin: I was immediately gripped by a strangely appealing force.
Bedridden, I have nothing to do but give up my own will.