With his smile and typical Japanese kindness, Fr Kurahashi attended to everyone who came to his church asking for advice or confession or to request a Mass.
Whenever he reflected on some periods of his childhood a veil of sadness would come over his face. With a slightly muffled voice he would recall that his father died when he was two years old, during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) where he had been sent as a soldier leaving his wife alone with her three children.
After the Second World War when Japan surrendered after the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, the military hospital near his home in Tokyo was given to the "Mothers Adorers", a religious congregation. Here he met Sister Teresa Takashima who suggested to him that he should go to the Don Bosco School, which was then also a home for orphaned children. A year later his mother died and he was entrusted to the direct care of the Salesians in the Don Bosco House. It was there at the age 14 that he received his First Communion and decided that he would one day become a priest.
He was ordained priest on 21 December 1966. He submitted a request to become a missionary and was sent to Bolivia where he fell in love with the people.
Fr Kurahashi maintains that music helps a lot during Mass. It attracts the faithful, and so he uses his talent during every celebration. This has brought him many friends.
He estimates that about 500,000 people have attended his Masses in Bolivia and that he “has baptized 30,000 children and officiated at the marriage of 5,000 couples. They came to me because of the friendship I had for many years with their parents."
Source: El Deber
