St. Damien of Molokai
Born: January 3, 1840
Died: April 15, 1889
Feast Day: May 10
Patron of: People with leprosy
Damien de Veuster may be Hawaii’s most famous celebrity after, of course, Magnum P.I. and (for you oldsters) Steve McGarret of Hawaii Five-O. And since those last two guys were only fictional, that leaves Damien.
Damien had a character that his biographers politely describe as “headstrong.” When he was a 23-year-old seminarian, he decided he wanted to go to Hawaii as a missionary. When his superior had misgivings, Damie went over his head- to the Father General of the Sacred Heart Fathers, who gave the young Belgian the go-ahead. Damien’s family worried about his missionary skill: even in the seminary, many had found him tactless, with his displays of temper at less zealous students.
And so Damien went to Hawaii, where he was soon ordained. The islands in the 1870s were being ravaged by the disease of leprosy, brought there by Europeans. The government, in an effort to avoid further devastation, rounded up every leper it could find and shipped them off to a remote peninsula on the island of Molokai. With no law and no one to care for them, the lepers lived in squalor, debauchery, and despair until they died.
After several years in the islands, Damien volunteered to go to Molokai. Though his stay was to be temporary, he soon received permission to stay as long as he wished- which turned out to be sixteen years.
Damien, sickened by what he found on Molokai, wasted little time putting his brute strength and his bul;oshness to work. With the lepers’ help, he built wooden cottages to replace the colony’s grass shacks. He taught them how to farm and raise livestock. He personally built coffins for the several lepers who died every week; and he formed a Christian Burial Association, which provided music and banners for the funerals.
Damien put his stubborn character to work as well. The Hawaiian Board of Health grew to hate his insistent request for more money, more materials- as if the lepers were the only Hawaiians who needed help. The lepers, too, sometimes felt the sting of Damien’s ire: he often broke up their wild, drunken parties, cracking a few heads with his big walking stick. Perhaps it worked. Attendance at the colony’s church grew to overflowing.
Damien rejected the then-popular-notion, held by some of the Yankee preachers in Hawaii, that God had sent leprosy as a punishment for the islanders’ loose living. After several months in the colony, he finally put aside his fear of disease and began touching the lepers, eating with them, binding up their sores,. He preached about how “we lepers” are children of God. And then he caught leprosy himself.
Spurred by newspaper accounts, donations poured in from around the world. Damien’s religious superior accused him of showboating for the press, and he refused to see Damien or celebrate Mass with him when he visited Honolulu, for fear of catching the disease. This last rejection hit Damien hard.
Damien died of leprosy 100 years ago- on April 15, 1889- but not before he saw his leper colony safe in the care of a new priest, two lay helpers, and on order of nuns who work then even today.
Originally published in Salt magazine, ©Claretian Publications.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
