It started back in Jabalpur, India with his pet cow, Pratibha.
“I was in the eighth grade and my job after school each day was to go buy milk for our family from an older couple in our neighborhood,” he said.
One day he told the woman how he wished he too had a cow.
“They were Hindu and Hindus don’t sell their animals, but she gave me a calf,” he said smiling at the memory. “I was so excited. I led my cow with a rope, maybe a quarter mile along a busy road to our house.”
When his father got home from work that evening, Satish could barely contain himself as he gushed: “Dad! Dad, I got a cow!”
“But my dad was livid. He said, ‘We don’t need a cow! You are going to bring it back to that family!’
“I told him in the morning I would.
“That night I took my bedsheet and four sticks and tried to build a shelter for my cow. When my dad saw what I was doing, his heart melted. He worked as a civil engineer, and the next day he sent some workers to build a shed.”
Once the calf grew into a milk cow, Satish was able to supply milk for his family and the neighbors.
Fast forward to 2010, and Father Satish, then 44, had been a Catholic priest for some 16 years and had been living in Dayton for a decade.
During those 10 years — along with attending the University of Dayton where he got his master’s degree in mass communications and a Ph.D. in theology — he had become immersed in the Immaculate Conception parish on Smithville Road, where he was an associate pastor and was dedicating himself to the issues of the disenfranchised, especially children who lived in poverty and were hungry.
There were times he thought back to his boyhood days and the various pets he’d had, and he’d tell the Immaculate staff how one day he wanted a “dog-gee.”
He never followed through on his wish because twice a year he returned to India to see his family and worried about what he’d do with his pet when he was gone.
That November, when he went with a staffer to Jack’s Aquarium & Pets on Smithville Road to get fish food, he spotted a white Maltese for sale.
“I saw those two big eyes looking at me and it was love at first sight,” he said. “I generally never pet puppies (in stores) because I think it gives them false hope, but this time I did.
“I said, ‘Man, that’s my dog-gee,’ but I put that thought aside because I was going to India soon.”
As soon as he went home that day, the staffer returned to Jack’s to inquire about the dog. Father Satish’s fellow workers had secretly hoped to get the puppy for him and agreed they would care for it when he was out of the country.
But when they heard the dog was $700, it was out of their price range. Still, they returned each week to see if it was there and had been marked down.
On Christmas Day, the snow-white Maltese was gone, and they thought she had been sold.
But they quickly found out she was in the back, marked down and waiting for them.
“I came home on Dec. 26 and saw this little white thing running around our living room and from those eyes I knew it was my dog,” Father Satish said.
He doted on the pup he called Tutu: “She ate better than I did.”
As he noted in a social media post, one day she ate salmon for breakfast, beef for lunch and duck for dinner. A groomer would come to the house to care for her.
But after awhile, a troubling concern nagged at him.
With all the money and focus he put into Tutu, was his new pet eclipsing his commitment to his other pet causes, especially child hunger?
He became more concerned when, after a bit of research, he discovered Americans spent $61 billion a year — today that figure is $147 billion — on their pets.
Meanwhile, each year hunger issues cause the deaths of 3.1 million children worldwide. And here in the Dayton area, he said 17 percent of the residents — including 39,390 children — don’t have enough to eat each day.
Although he’d long been a tither, he decided that for every dollar he spent on Tutu, he would donate an equal amount to charity.
One day he mentioned his plan in one of his much-embraced homilies (they can be found each week, along with his blogs, videos and other things on his website satishjoseph.com) and a parishioner suggested he start his own non-profit charity.
With then help of the Dayton Foundation — specifically Joe Baldasare, the chief development officer and longtime vice president of development — he launched MercyPets.
It is run by a committee of volunteers and while the collected donations initially went to one local project, they now have expanded to eight.
Here in Dayton, MercyPets provides food for Erma’s House, where children get supervised visits with parents who are working on personal issues.
It also gives baby food and formula to Catholic Social Services for women who cannot breast feed or afford to buy formula.
Around the Western Hemisphere, MercyPets has projects in Haiti, Columbia, Honduras, Guatemala and previously in Nicaragua. Next month it expands to Rwanda in Africa.
With these other projects, MercyPets provides food for young school children who are hungry, kids in recovery from abuse or neglect and families living in utter poverty.
“In those countries we are trying to make the lives of the people better so they can stay there instead of leaving with their children,” he said. “We’re teaching their mothers and fathers the nutritional needs of their children and helping them achieve them.”
At present, MercyPets is mostly a local organization, with some 250 newsletters regularly sent to donors. Even so, the group has collected close to $400,000 since its inception and 100 percent of all the donations goes to the intended projects.
To find out more, go to mercypets.org.
To send a check via the Dayton Foundation, mail to: MercyPets Fund #1365; PO Box 20220; Dayton, Ohio, 45420.
Father Satish has hoped to draw some national interest to MercyPets and one day expand it to other cities.
For a long time, he tried to get on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk about the project to her and her massive audience.
“I’d write the letters to the show, but I never heard back,” he said quietly.
Too bad.
Ellen didn’t know what she was missing, both with MercyPets and in Father Satish Joseph.
‘I know what I want to be’
“My family was very religious. Every weekend priests and nuns or someone from the church was invited to our home,” said Father Satish.
“I remember when I was in the sixth grade, I was doing my homework when I told my mom, ‘I know what I want to be.’ I had no idea what I was saying really — I was just 12 — but I said, ‘I think I want to be a priest!’
“She was preparing dinner and said, ‘Yeah, yeah ... we’ll talk about it later.’”
The subject wasn’t brought up again, and Satish followed other pursuits — he and some friends even had a band, and they covered Beatles’ songs — but by the time he graduated from high school, he said the desire was back:
“I said, ‘I am going to be a priest.’”
He was 17 when he joined the congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists) as a postulant, and that meant traveling to a seminary 1,300 kilometers (808 miles) away in Bangalore, which has 14 million people.
His parents accompanied him, and the day they were to leave, he had a bit of a panic attack.
The family went to morning Mass and afterward passed a picture of the Mother of Perpetual Help, which portrays the Blessed Mother Mary holding the Child Jesus, who appears to have just jumped into her arms.
One of his sandals is falling off. He’s gripping his mother’s hand, while above two angels hold the instruments so well known from the Crucifixion: a spear, a sponge, a crown of thorns, nails and a cross.
Jesus appears fearful of his future, but his mother holds him tight.
And that’s when Satish’s mom, Licykutty, told him that just like in the picture, she will always be there for him.
That buoyed Satish, and 12 years later — April 25, 1994 — he was ordained a priest.
He spent his first five years traveling across India preaching parish missions in three languages: English, Hindi and Bengali.
He was then sent to North America to further his education, but he first needed to spend nine months at Crec-Avex Center in Lyon, France to add some more credits to his academic transcript.
His aim was to go to Montreal to study communications at Concordia University.
But while in Lyon he met Sister Angela Ann Zukoski, the dynamic director of pastoral initiatives at the University of Dayton and a professor there in Religious Studies.
She travels the world giving lectures and teaching classes and was saluted as one of the most influential Catholic educators of the 20th Century by the National Catholic Educational Association.
She said. ‘Why are you going to Montreal?’” Father Satish said with a smile. “She said, ‘Come to the University of Dayton.’
“I said, ‘Where?’
“I had never heard of Dayton.”
He took her advice, and it’s been one of the best decisions — for him and the people here — that he ever made.
Helping hungry children
When the Ethiopian famine in 1984 became global news — and inspired the “We Are the World” musical tribute — Father Satish was 19.
“I read a story of an aid worker who was bereft seeing an infant at an emaciated mother’s breast crying for milk,” he once explained. “The aid worker was becoming agitated with the woman and pleaded with her to breastfeed the baby.
“When the reluctant mother did, the aid worker realized how wrong he was. All that the infant got was blood.
“I remember being in tears that day. Since then, I have ached for hungry children.”
That became his focus as a Redemptorist, whose charism is “preaching the good news to the most abandoned.”
After he came to Dayton, he left the Redemptorists and, at the request of the Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, stayed here and became “incardinated,” which means he serves the Diocese of Cincinnati.
He’s spent his time predominately at Immaculate Conception in various capacities, and now — with the Bread of Life grouping of five Dayton parishes: Immaculate Conception, Holy Angels, St. Mary, St. Helen and St. Anthony — he serves as the pastor of each.
He also is the moderator of the Spanish ministry in Dayton, which includes two large Sunday masses one at St. Mary, the other at Immaculate Conception.
His weeks are busy, saying daily masses — this past week he also officiated three funerals and a wedding — hearing confessions and doing numerous other duties including counseling sessions and visits to hospitals and Hospice.
The Redemptorist’s teachings and the memory of that Ethiopian mother have remained seared in his heart. Throughout his priesthood he has been as vocal advocate of children, mothers in need, refugees and asylum seekers.
On occasion that had drawn the wrath of some area hatemongers.
Awhile back he was getting threatening phone calls, telling him, “Go back to India. We don’t need you here.” When the calls kept up, he contacted the Dayton police, who tracked down one perpetrator who happened to be a parishioner at another parish
“I wanted conciliation, but he said he never wanted to see me,” Father Satish said.
The police told the man to desist, and though he’s not called again, he still sends hateful emails.
Father Satish remains undeterred. He considers himself a disciple of Jesus and said:
“I must think like Jesus, talk like Jesus, act like Jesus.”
By doing so, his oath has not been altered, nor has his voice been silenced.
That outlook helped bring about MercyPets.
Although Tutu, its poster child, died at age 13, Father Satish has two new Maltese, who are 18 months old: Halo and Allie. And they are now energetic representatives of his charity.
After we spoke the other day over lunch at Sky Asian Cuisine on Wilmington Pike, I watched Father Satish return to his black Honda Accord, which furthers his call to action.
The back window has a sunscreen the reads: MercyPets — Pet Owners Alleviate Child Hunger….mercypets.org.”
The right, side panel has a picture of Tutu and a request for all to read:
“Is your pet a MercyPet”?
Such is the unique gift of Father Satish. Not only has he found a way to be sure his pets give back, but he’s getting your pets to do the same.
The hatemonger was so wrong.
Hungry children, their mothers and people in need in so many places would all agree.
We do need Father Satish Joseph here.
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