Hallows Day

All the saints

St Damienof Molokai

A priest who chose to live with people everyone else was afraid of.

Saint Damien of Molokai was a farm boy from Belgium who grew up to become a real-life superhero. He sailed all the way to a Hawaiian island to care for people who were sick and forgotten. Instead of just talking, he grabbed a hammer—helping to build hundreds of houses, piping in fresh water, and even starting choirs and a band! He gave up everything to make sure no one felt alone.

Lived
1840 to 1889
Feast day
10 May
Patron saint of
people with leprosy
Where
Belgium and Hawaii

In pictures, look for a priest in a black cassock with glasses and a wide hat, often with children, sometimes with a hammer

Taking his brother’s place

Damien’s older brother Pamphile was chosen to go to Hawaii as a missionary. Then Pamphile fell ill and couldn’t go. Damien, who wasn’t a priest yet, wrote to the head of their order asking to go in his place.

The answer was yes. In 1863 Damien set sail, and the next year he was ordained a priest in Honolulu.

Source: Vatican, biography of Damien de Veuster for his canonisation, 2009

The place people were sent away to

In 1873 the bishop asked for priests to take turns visiting the leprosy settlement on Molokai. Damien offered to go first, and stayed for the rest of his life.

The settlement was a sad and lawless place. People had been left there with almost nothing. Damien got to work: he built cottages and homes for orphaned children, enlarged the church, brought in clean water, dressed people’s sores, and helped them to live with hope.

Source: Vatican, biography of Damien de Veuster for his canonisation, 2009; US National Park Service, Kalaupapa: “Saint Damien”

We lepers

For years Damien touched, hugged and cared for people with leprosy. Around 1884, the story goes, he put his feet in very hot water by mistake and felt nothing. He knew what it meant: he had caught the disease.

Ever since he arrived, he had begun his sermons not with “My brothers” but with “We lepers”. Now it was true. He kept working as hard as he could, finishing buildings and looking after the orphans, until he died in 1889.

Source: St Damien, letter to his brother Pamphile, 25 November 1873 (in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin); Vatican, biography of Damien de Veuster for his canonisation, 2009; US National Park Service, Kalaupapa: “Saint Damien”

Help at last

In his last years, help arrived. Mother Marianne Cope, who is now a saint too, came with her sisters to care for the patients. Brother Joseph Dutton, an American, came to help and stayed for over 40 years.

After Damien died, the author of Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, visited Molokai. When someone wrote nasty things about Damien, Stevenson wrote a famous letter defending him.

Source: US National Park Service, Kalaupapa: “Saint Damien”; Robert Louis Stevenson, Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr Hyde of Honolulu (1890)

When it was hard

Damien was often the only priest on Molokai, which meant there was no one to hear his confession, and he felt very alone. He could be stubborn and impatient, and he argued with officials and even with his own superiors.

Damien wasn’t perfect. But he went where nobody else wanted to go, and he stayed.

Source: Robert Louis Stevenson, Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr Hyde of Honolulu (1890); US National Park Service, Kalaupapa: “Saint Damien”

I make myself a leper with the lepers, to gain all to Jesus Christ.

St Damien, letter to his brother Pamphile, 25 November 1873 (source)

Try this

  • Who gets left out at your school, in your street or in your parish? Do one brave, kind thing this week for someone others avoid.
  • Find out about leprosy today. It can now be cured, but people still need care, and help to be treated kindly.

A prayer

St Damien, you went to people the world had forgotten and made them a family. Help us to notice people who are left out, and to be brave enough to love them. Pray for us.

For grown-ups: more about St Damien of Molokai

Jozef De Veuster (1840 to 1889) joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, arrived in Honolulu in 1864 and was ordained there. He reached the Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokai on 10 May 1873, which is why his feast is kept on 10 May, and served there for 16 years. He found he had leprosy in 1884 or 1885, and died on 15 April 1889.

Leprosy, now called Hansen’s disease, is caused by a bacterium and is curable with modern drugs. Hawaii’s isolation laws were lifted only in 1969. St John Paul II beatified Damien in 1995, and Pope Benedict XVI canonised him on 11 October 2009. His statue stands in the US Capitol as one of Hawaii’s two.

Where these stories come from

  1. Vatican, biography of Damien de Veuster for his canonisation, 2009
  2. Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at the canonisation, 11 October 2009
  3. Robert Louis Stevenson, Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr Hyde of Honolulu (1890)
  4. US National Park Service, Kalaupapa: “Saint Damien”
  5. St Damien, letter to his brother Pamphile, 25 November 1873 (in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin)