Blessed Damien of Moloka’i
Feast Day: April 15 or May 10
To
serve in Hawaii sounds like a dream come true. To serve at a leper colony
in Hawaii doesn’t sound quite as appealing. And yet, Damien Joseph
de Veuster, a young Belgian priest, actually made a request to his superiors
to allow him to serve outcasts of society.Westerners had arrived in the Hawaiian Islands late in the eighteenth century. The population was about three hundred thousand. Within a hundred years the ravages of disease, especially leprosy, left only fifty thousand people. Unable to control the spread of leprosy, which is contagious by contact, authorities designated the remote island of Moloka’i as the home for lepers.
Taken away from their families and literally dumped on the island, the conditions for the people at Moloka’i were horrific. From the beginning, Father Damien sought to restore the dignity of the lepers. One of his first tasks was to restore dignity to death. Where previously the deceased were tossed into shallow graves to be consumed by pigs and dogs, Blessed Damien designed a clean and fenced-in cemetery. He constructed a church and worked alongside the people to build clean new houses. He organized sports competition, even though some competitors had lost their feet. Two organists who had ten fingers between them played at Mass. Within several years of his arrival the island was utterly transformed.
Blessed Damien did not shrink from contact with the people. He made a habit of referring to the people as "we lepers." He eventually contracted the disease. He died on April 15, 1899 at the age of 59. He was beatified in 1995 by Pope John Paul II.
By Fr. Jerry Vincke
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