| Blessed Damien of
Pearcedale |
Father Damien was a Roman Catholic missionary
who helped lepers on the Hawaiian island of
Molokaʻi and also died of the disease. |
| The Leper Priest |
| Born |
3 January 1840(1840--), Tremelo, Belgium |
| Died |
15 April 1889 (aged 49), Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaii |
| Venerated in |
Catholic Church, Anglican
Church |
| Beatified |
1995, Rome by John Paul
II |
| Major shrine |
Leuven, Belgium (bodily relics); Maui, Hawaii (relics of his hand) |
| Feast |
May 10 (universal); April 15 (in Hawaii) |
| Attributes |
leprosy |
| Patronage |
people with leprosy, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS, the
State of Hawaii. |
 Saints Portal |
Father Damien, also Blessed Damien of Molokai and born Joseph de Veuster (January 3, 1840 – April 15, 1889), was a Roman Catholic priest
from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a
missionary religious order.
Damien is most noted for his extreme devotion to caring and ministering to people with what was then widely known as
leprosy, forced by government-sanctioned medical segregation, living on the island of
Molokai in the Kingdom of Hawaii[1]. In the Roman Catholic and Anglican
traditions, as well as other denominations of Christianity, Damien is considered the
spiritual patron for Hansen's Disease, HIV and AIDS patients as well as outcasts. As the patron saint of the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu and of Hawaii, Father Damien Day is celebrated statewide on April 15. Upon his
beatification towards canonization and sainthood by
Pope John Paul II in 1995, Damien was given a memorial
feast day, celebrated on May 10 on the church calendar and was conferred the official title of
Blessed Damien of Molokai.
Several memorials have been made to Damien worldwide. The Father Damien Statue
honors the priest in bronze at the United States Capitol while a full size replica
stands in front of the Hawaii State Capitol. In 2005,
Damien was honored with the title of De Grootste Belg, chosen as The Greatest
Belgian throughout Belgian history in polling conducted by the Flemish public broadcasting service, VRT.[2]
In both ecumenical religious and non-sectarian communities, Damien is being adopted as the symbol of how society should treat
HIV/AIDS patients in defiance of the misconceptions of the disease, much like leprosy treatment was an outgrowth of
misconceptions. Several Damien Centers have been established worldwide to serve people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.[3]
Early life
Damien was born Jozef ("Jef") de Veuster, the seventh child of the corn merchant Frans de Veuster and his wife Cato Wouters in
the village of Tremelo in Flemish Brabant. He attended college at Braine-le-Comte, then entered the novitiate of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary
in Leuven, taking the name of Damianus (Damiaan in Dutch) in his first vows, probably after
Saint Damian.[4] Following in his brother's footsteps, Damien became a Picpus Brother on October 7,
1860. His brother could not fulfill his dream of travelling overseas to actively participate in
missionary work. Damien took up his brother's dream as his own and went in his place on a mission abroad.
Mission to Hawaii
On March 19, 1864, Damien landed at Honolulu Harbor in downtown Honolulu as a missionary. There,
Damien was ordained to the priesthood on May 24, 1864 at the
Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, a church established by his religious
order. He served at several parishes on the island of Oahu just as the kingdom faced a public
health crisis.
Native Hawaiians became afflicted by diseases inadvertently introduced to the
Hawaiian Islands by foreign traders and sailors. Thousands died of influenza, syphilis and other ailments which had never before affected
Hawaiians. This included the plight of leprosy, today called Hansen's disease. Fearful of its
spread, King Kamehameha V segregated the lepers of the kingdom and moved them to a
settlement colony on the north side of the island of Molokai. The Royal Board of Health provided them with supplies and food but
did not yet have the resources to offer proper healthcare. In 1865, Father Damien was assigned to the Catholic Mission in North Kohala on the island of Hawai‘i. While Msgr. Louis Maigret, vicar apostolic, believed that the lepers at the very least needed a priest to
minister to their needs, he realized that this assignment could potentially be a death sentence. After prayerful thought, Damien
asked Msgr. Maigret for permission to go to Moloka‘i.
Colony of death
Father Damien, seen here with the Kalawao Girls Choir during the 1870s, took on the role of priest and doctor to lepers in
settlement colonies.
Father Damien's church at Kalawao.
On May 10, 1873, Damien arrived at the secluded settlement at
Kalaupapa. Bishop Maigret presented Damien to the colonists as "one who will be a
father to you, and who loves you so much that he does not hesitate to become one of you; to live and die with you." The
settlement was surrounded by an impregnable mountain ridge. There were 816 lepers living at Kalaupapa. Damien's first course of
action was to build a church and establish the Parish of Saint Philomena.
University of Hawaii System historians working
with the Hawaii Catholic Church to archive its history agree that
Damien was the only one in a position to provide comfort for the people of Kalaupapa. His role was not limited to being a priest;
he took on the role of doctor as well. He dressed ulcers, built homes and beds. Damien even built coffins and dug graves.
Sociologists argued before the Roman Curia in proceedings for
sainthood that Damien was sent to a morally deprived, lawless "colony of death" where people were
forced to fight each other to survive. The kingdom didn't plan the settlement to be in such disarray but the government's neglect
in providing much needed resources and medical help created the chaos. Damien's arrival is seen as a turning point for the
community. Under his leadership, basic laws were enforced, shacks became painted houses, working farms were organized and schools
were erected.
His symbols are a tree and a dove.
Death
Father Damien died on
April 15,
1889. This photograph
shows Mother Marianne Cope standing beside his body.
As indicated in diaries, in December 1884 Damien went about his evening ritual of soaking his feet in boiling water. He could
not feel the heat: he had contracted leprosy. Despite the discovery, residents claim that Damien worked vigorously to build as
many homes as he could and planned for the continuation of the programmes he created after he was gone.
With the flurry of activity, four strangers came to Kalaupapa in search of Damien to help the ailing missionary. Louis Lambert
Conrardy was a Belgian priest. Mother Marianne Cope was Superior of the Franciscan Sisters
of Syracuse. Joseph Dutton was an American Civil
War soldier who left behind a marriage broken because of alcoholism. James Sinnett was
a nurse from Chicago. Conrardy took up pastoral duties while Cope organized
a working hospital. Dutton attended to the construction and maintenance of the community's buildings. Sinnett nursed Damien in
the last phases of the disease, closing his eyes upon Father Damien's death at the age of 49 from leprosy. He was originally
buried on Molokai, but in 1936, the Belgian government asked for the return of his body, which is now buried in Leuven, a city close to the village where he was born.
Order of Kalakaua
Altar of the Kalawao Catholic church.
King David Kalakaua bestowed on Damien the honor Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalakaua. When Princess Lydia
Liliuokalani visited the settlement to present the medal, she was reported as having been too distraught and heartbroken
to read her speech. The princess shared her experience with the world and publicly acclaimed Damien's efforts. Consequently,
Damien's name was spread across the United States and Europe. American Protestants raised large sums of money for the
missionary. The Church of England sent food, medicine, clothing and supplies. It is
believed that Damien never wore the medal given to him.
Criticisms
Upon his death, a global discussion arose as to the mysteries of Damien's life and his work on the island of Molokai. Much
criticism came especially out of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in Hawaii. It has been argued for decades that these church leaders took a stance
against Damien merely out of spite for Catholicism in general.[citation needed] They derided Damien as a "false shepherd" who was driven by personal
ambition and ego. The most famous treatise published against Damien was by a Honolulu Presbyterian, Reverend C. M. Hyde, in a
letter dated August 2, 1889 to a fellow pastor, Reverend H. B.
Gage. Reverend Hyde wrote:
Following
Father Damien's death the lepers of Molokai gathered around his grave in mourning.
Father Damien's grave today.
- In answer to your inquiries about Father Damien, I can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the
extravagant newspaper laudations, as if he was a most saintly philanthropist. The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty man,
head-strong and bigoted. He was not sent to Molokai, but went there without orders; did not stay at the leper settlement (before
he became one himself), but circulated freely over the whole island (less than half the island is devoted to the lepers), and he
came often to Honolulu. He had no hand in the reforms and improvements inaugurated, which were the work of our Board of Health,
as occasion required and means were provided. He was not a pure man in his relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died
should be attributed to his vices and carelessness. Others have done much for the lepers, our own ministers, the government
physicians, and so forth, but never with the Catholic idea of meriting eternal life.[5]
Having read the letter, Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, also a Presbyterian, drafted an equally famous treatise as a rebuttal in
defense of Damien and derided Reverend Hyde for creating gossip to support his blatant anti-Catholic agenda. On October 26, 1889, Stevenson wrote:
- When we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow
bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and succours the
afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honour — the battle cannot be
retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. [5]
In addition to calling Reverend Hyde a "crank", Stevenson answered the charge that Damien was "not sent to Molokai but went
there without orders" by arguing that:
- Is this a misreading? or do you really mean the words for blame? I have heard Christ, in the pulpits of our Church, held
up for imitation on the ground that His sacrifice was voluntary. Does Dr. Hyde think otherwise?[5]
In the process of examining Damien's fitness for beatification and canonization, the Roman Curia pored over a great deal of
documentation of published and unpublished criticisms against the missionary's life and work. Diaries and interviews were scoured
and debated. In the end it was found that what Stevenson called "heroism" was indeed genuine.
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi offered his own defense of Damien's life and work. Gandhi claimed
Damien to have been an inspiration for his social campaigns in India that led to the freedom of
his people and secured aid for those that needed it. Gandhi was quoted in M.S. Mehendale’s 1971
account called Gandhi Looks at Leprosy as saying, "The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who
compare with Father Damien of Moloka'i. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism."[6]
Canonization process
This statue of Father Damien sits outside the entrance to the Hawaiʻi State Capitol Building on the island of
Oʻahu.
On June 4, 1995, Pope John Paul II beatified Blessed Damien and gave him his official spiritual title. On December 20, 1999, Jorge Medina
Estévez, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the
Sacraments, confirmed the November 1999 decision of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to place Blessed Damien on the
liturgical calendar with the rank of optional memorial. His official Feast Day is on May 10 of
each year. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu is currently
awaiting findings by the Vatican as to the authenticity of several miracles attributed to
Damien. Upon confirmation that those miracles are genuine, Blessed Damien could then be canonized and receive the title of Saint Damien of Molokaʻi.
In Blessed Damien's role as patron of those with HIV and AIDS, the world's only Roman Catholic memorial chapel to those who
have died of this disease, at the Église Saint-Pierre-Apôtre in Montreal, is
consecrated to him.
Movie
After the beatification of Blessed Damien, Belgian film producer Tharsi Vanhuysse was
inspired to lead a project honoring the famous priest. Vanhuysse teamed with film producer Grietje Lammertyn of ERA Films and
searched for screenwriter, director and lesser known actors. Australian David Wenham was
chosen to play the lead. Another Australian, Paul Cox, was selected to direct the project.
Previously, he had completed an independent movie about the artist Vincent van Gogh.
American John Briley wrote the screenplay. Briley was an Academy
Award winner for writing the screenplay for Gandhi. He also worked on the
movie, Cry Freedom. Other actors in the movie entitled include Derek Jacobi,
Kris Kristofferson, Sam Neill, Tom Wilkinson and Peter O'Toole. The movie was released on
March 17, 2000.
Father Damien was portrayed in 1980 by Ken Howard in the television film .[7]
References
Sources
- Gavan Daws, Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, University of Hawai'i Press,
1994.
- Hilde Eynikel, Molokai: The Story of Father Damien, Alba House: 1999.
- Richard Stewart, Leper Priest of Moloka'i: The Father Damien Story, University of Hawai'i Press: 2001.
External links
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