Malaysian Cardinal Sebastian Francis, Bishop of Penang, has requested the beatification and canonization of Sybil Kathigasu, heroine and lay martyr which protected information, as well as housing and caring for local members of the anti-Japanese resistance during World War II.
In the midst of the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, Kathigasu—a wife, mother of three, nurse, and devout Catholic—was imprisoned, beaten nearly to death, and left crippled for treating the gunshot wounds of a rebel guerrilla.
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Early in the occupation, Kathigasu hung an image of the Sacred Heart on his wall that concealed a peephole. In the worst nights after her arrest, imprisoned and isolated, she clung to a Rosary. Once released, she immediately went to a church. Unable to walk because she was paralyzed from a severe beating, she crawled down the aisle of St. Joseph’s Church in Batu Gajah, Perak, giving thanks to God.
The Bishop of Penang has appointed Fr Eugene Benedict of the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur to investigate Kathigasu’s life and determine whether to move forward with his cause for beatification.
Devotion in the midst of war
Kathigasu led a normal life before the war began. She was born in Medan (Sumatra, Indonesia), the daughter of an Irish-Eurasian planter named Joseph Daly and his wife, Beatrice Matilda Martin, a midwife. She was her fifth child and her only wife.
They raised her in the Catholic faith and became concerned when she fell in love with Abdon Clement Kathigasu, a Hindu doctor. When he asked her father’s permission to marry her, Abdon assured him that he would join the faith so important to her family.
They married on January 7, 1919 and had their first child, Michael, just nine months later. Michael died 19 hours after birth, on August 26, 1919, and Sybil’s mother suggested they adopt a son, William. Her first daughter, Olga, was born less than two years later, on February 26, 1921, and Dawn, her youngest daughter, came into the world on September 21, 1936.
Beginning in 1926, the couple ran a private medical practice in the city of Ipoh, Malaysia. Signs of war interrupted his happy life in 1941, when Ipoh was bombed. Abdon, hit by shrapnel, had to be taken to the hospital and operated on.
It was the beginning of the Japanese occupation of Malaysia. The family moved to the outskirts of Ipoh in search of safety, to a small mining town called Papan. They lived in a friend’s store at 74 Main Street.
The Japanese police, known as the Kempeitaicame to occupy Ipoh, enforcing strict laws and using torture to investigate any suspect, including a Japanese form of waterboarding called “water treatment” in which the perpetrator forces gallons of water down the victim’s throat and then steps on his stomach.
Kathigasu and her husband followed the news through an illegal shortwave radio they nicknamed “Josephine.” They treated patients throughout the war, providing their services free of charge to those most in need. When a guerrilla entered her clinic with bullet holes in her leg, they helped him. Kathigasu provided medical care, information and shelter to the resistance against the Japanese.
Word spread about the rogue nurse. Her husband was arrested in July 1943, and a month later, so was she.
During her imprisonment, Kathigasu and her husband were interrogated and beaten, and Abdon received water treatment three times. Kathigasu was beaten and interrogated but he prayed the Rosary for her, refusing to give any information to the Kempeitai.
The psychological and physical torture reached its peak when the sergeant of the Kempeitai Eiko Yoshimura kidnapped the couple’s daughter, Dawn, who was 5 years old at the time. The officers tied her to a tree and set her on fire in front of Kathigasu, threatening to cut the ropes holding her above the fire if Kathigasu did not speak about her. They tied Kathigasu and beat her with a stick.
“Be very brave, Mom,” she remembers, in her autobiography, what her daughter told her. “Don’t tell them anything.”
Kathigasu didn’t tell them anything. The officers began cutting the ropes. But they took pity on the young woman and took her down to safety.
Kathigasu reprimanded Yoshimura for her actions and Yoshimura hit her, kicking her in the face so hard that she would end up dying from the wound in her jaw.
Kathigasu and Abdon were taken to Batu Gajah prison, a more humane place that served three meals a day. She was tried for her crimes, which Yoshimura had told her would cost her death. She was accused of being a spy for the rebels, of spreading British propaganda and of being a doctor for the rebels.
Kathigasu lost the use of her legs, paralyzed by an earlier beating, but was sentenced to life in prison instead of death. Her husband and her son were sentenced to 15 and 3 years, respectively.
They were freed in 1945 after the surrender of Germany, shortly before the surrender of Japan in World War II. Malay guerrilla rebels brought about the fall of the Japanese occupation in Malaysia.
Kathigasu visited St. Joseph’s Church after the liberation, praying in thanksgiving even though he had to crawl, not walk, down the aisle.
She was rushed to London for medical treatment, where she wrote her autobiography, No Dram of Mercy (No Shot of Mercy), which was published after her death in 1954. The written statements were used in a trial against Yoshimura, who was executed by hanging for her war crimes.
King George VI awarded Kathigasu the George Medal at Buckingham Palace for his bravery.
On June 12, 1948, at the age of 49, Kathigasu died of septicemia – a severe infection – in the jaw. She was buried in Scotland, but her body returned to Ipoh a year later, and she was reburied in St. Michael’s Church. Her husband died 24 years later, in December 1972.
The legacy of Sybil Kathigasu
Kathigasu has been honored in Malaysia and around the world. A road in Ipoh is named after her, and the shop’s clinic still stands as a memorial to her.
On June 28, 1948, she was honored in Time magazine for her bravery and medical help. A television series about her was produced in 2010, and on September 3, 2016, she was the subject of a doodle from Google, in which she appears standing in front of the store, surrounded by the George Medal ribbon. Filmmakers are researching and casting a biopic about her, which will be released in the coming years.
Catholics also pay homage to Kathigasu. Pilgrims visit his tomb in the church of St. Michael and the workshop. During the Year of Mission 2019, she was honored in Malaysia as one of five exemplars of the Church’s mission. A chapter of the Malaysian catechetical series is dedicated to her; a wing in St. Joseph’s Church, Batu Gajah, Perak, is named after her.
In a July 1 statement, Cardinal Francis praised Kathigasu for his “life of service in love and compassion for the sick and suffering” and noted that this year marks the 76th anniversary of his passing.
“We would do well to revisit his life and work to find inspiration for our times,” he continued. “I wish that efforts be made to collect, compile, study, reflect and make available to us his life and work as a testimony to us. I hope to advance his cause of beatification and canonization by the grace of God,” he added.
The beatification process requires both verification that the candidate lived a holy life and a miracle granted through intercession to that candidate. Canonization requires a second miracle.
“I see this as an opportunity to come together and reflect on his life for us as people of faith,” the cardinal wrote. “I wish that we take up the cause of Sybil Kathigasu as an example and inspiration of evangelical life,” he remarked.
“Her example of life makes us see that what motivated her was the faith that her family instilled in her, which allowed her to live a life marked by a spirituality of dependence on the grace of God and the love of Jesus that filled her with hope in his life, and his love for those who suffer and those in need in normal situations and in circumstances of conflict,” he added.
“His story continues to inspire many people from all walks of life to this day,” he wrote. “She inspires people of all cultures and faiths,” Cardinal Francis concluded.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.
Kate Quinones
Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a member of College Fix. She has publications in the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register and CatholicVote. She graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.