IFTTT Autopost 
Sybil Medan Kathigasu was born on September 3, 1899, in Medan, Sumatra, Dutch West Indies, only girl of five children. Her father, Joseph Daly was an Irish planter, and her mother, Beatrice Matilda Martin Daly was a French-Eurasian midwife.
When she grew up, Sybil became a nurse and a midwife and began practicing nursing and midwifery at the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital. There, she met and fell in love with Arumugam Kanapathi Pillay, a Malaysian Indian Hindu physician. After converting to Catholicism from Hinduism, Arumugam was renamed Abdon Clement Kathigasu. The couple married in Kuala Lumpur on January 7, 1919.
From 1918 to 1936, the couple had three of their own children and adopted another.
From 1926 until the Japanese invaded Malaysia, Abdon and Sybil ran a clinic in Ipoh, the capital city of the State of Perak in Malaysia. There, they offered medical, nursing, and midwifery services.
Just before the Japanese forces invaded Ipoh, Abdon and Sybil and their children fled to Papan, Perak. There, they became active members of the anti-Japanese underground resistance Fifth Independent Regiment Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). Abdon and Sybil gave medicines and treated resistance forces for free, contrary to the Japanese rulers’ wishes. They also had a shortwave radio and listed to British broadcasts. And Sybil, because she spoke Cantonese fluently, was able to gather information for Chinese resistance members and give help as needed.
In July of 1943, Abdon was arrested by the Japanese for his work helping resistance fighters, and a month later, Sybil was arrested also. For two years, they suffered incredible tortures because of their Catholic faith. Often, the Japanese tortured the family members in front of each other to make the horrors even worse.
When Malaysia was liberated from the Japanese in August of 1945, Sybil was freed and flown to Britain for medical and nursing treatment. It was then she began to write her autobiography, No Dram of Mercy.
Before her death on June 12, 1948, Sybil received the George Medal for Gallantry from the British government. The cause of her death was septicemia from a jaw wound made by a Japanese soldier who kicked her in the head. Sybil’s husband, Dr. Abdon Kathigasu, was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) for “Services in the Allied Causes” after World War II; he died in 1972 at the age of 81.
Sybil Kathigasu is now known as a Servant of God in the Catholic Church.
