Saint of the lepers

His cassock was worn and faded, his hair tumbled like a schoolboy’s, his hands were stained and hardened by toil. But the glow of health was in his face, the buoyancy of youth in his manner; while his ringing laugh, his ready sympathy and his inspiring magnetism told of one who in any sphere might do a noble work, and who in that which he has chosen is doing the noblest of all works. This was Father Damien.

(Charles Warren Stoddard, who visited Kalawao in 1884)

In October, five new saints were canonised, including Belgian-born priest, Jozef De Veuster, known as Father Damien, who worked with lepers in Hawaii. Damien died of leprosy in 1889 after years tending to the sick on the island of Molokai. His story was movingly told in Paul Cox’s film Damien of Molokai, with David Wenham in the main role.

Damien arrived in Honolulu on March 19, 1864. There he was ordained into the Congregation of the Sacred Heart in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace and took the name of Damien. His first calling was on the big island of Hawaii, where he spent eight years, travelling great distances to minister to the people of his district. In 1873 he learned of the need for priests to serve the 700 Hansen’s disease victims confined on the island of Molokai. He volunteered to go and soon was on a boat carrying cattle and 50 patients bound for Kalawao.

Damien followed other ministers and priests and family and friends of patients who went to help. Slowly, Kalawao became a place to live rather than a place to die, for Damien offered hope. Assisted by patients, he built houses, constructed a water system and planted trees. He organised schools bands, and choirs. He provided medical care for the living and buried the dead.

He did not hesitate to badger the Hawaiian government and his church for more resources. These efforts attracted worldwide attention, resulting in a heightened awareness of the disease and the plight of its victims.

Damien had lived in Kalawao 12 years when it was confirmed that he had contracted Hansen’s disease. In his eagerness to care for his people he had not been careful about hygiene. Over the years he had done nothing to separate himself from his people, and now he was one of them.

Damien was 49 years old when he died April 15, 1889. Shortly before his death, he wrote to his brother Pamphile, ‘I am gently going to my grave. It is the will of God, and I thank him very much for letting me die of the same disease and in the same way as my lepers. I am very satisfied and very happy.’

In his homily, Benedict urged the faithful to learn from ‘the luminous examples of these saints, who did not put themselves at the centre but chose to go against the current and live according to the Gospel’.

A large delegation from Hawaii attended the ceremony, including a Hawaii resident who recovered from cancer after praying to Damien.

President Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Hawaii, praised Father Damien, saying he recalled many stories his my youth about him. ‘In our own time, as millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, we should draw on the example of Father Damien’s resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick’, the president said.