Damien De Veuster, popularly known as Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai ( or ; born Jozef De Veuster; 3 January 1840 – 15 April 1889), was a Belgian Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He ministered to a leper colony in Molokai, Kingdom of Hawaii, from 1873 until his death in 1889.
Damien taught the Catholic faith to the people of Hawaii. He also cared for patients of leprosy (lepers) and established leaders within the community to build houses, schools, roads, hospitals, and churches. He dressed residents' ulcers, built a reservoir, made coffins, dug graves, shared pipes, and ate poi with them, providing both medical and emotional support.
After 11 years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, Damien contracted leprosy. He continued with his work until dying on 15 April 1889. He also had tuberculosis, which worsened his condition, but some believe the reason he volunteered in the first place was due to tuberculosis.
Damien has been described as a "martyr of charity". He is considered the spiritual patron for people with leprosy and outcasts. Father Damien Day, which takes place on 15 April, is a minor statewide holiday in Hawaii. Damien is the patron saint of the Diocese of Honolulu and of Hawaii.
Damien was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 11 October 2009. Libert H. Boeynaems, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, calls him "the Apostle of the Lepers." Damien's feast day is 10 May.
Early life Damien De Veuster was born Jozef ("Jef") De Veuster on 3 January 1840 in the village of Tremelo in Flemish Brabant in Belgium. He was the youngest of seven children and the fourth son of Joannes Franciscus ("Frans") De Veuster, a Flemish corn merchant, and his wife Anne-Catherine ("Cato") Wouters. Jozef's older sisters, Eugénie and Pauline, eventually joined religious orders. His older brother Auguste became a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
At age 13, Jozef was forced to leave school to work on the family farm. His father Frans later sent him to a college at Braine-le-Comte to prepare for a commercial profession. However, after attending a mission given by the Redemptorists in 1858, Jozef decided to pursue a religious vocation.
Damie entered the novitiate of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary (Pipus Fathers) at Leuven and took the religious name of Damien, presumably after the first Saint Damien, a fourth-century physician and martyr. He was admitted to the religious profession on 7 October 1860.
The Pipus superiors deemed Damien as intelligent, but his education was too lacking for the priesthood. However, they changed their minds after he received extensive tutoring in Latin from his brother Auguste. While at the seminary, Damien prayed daily before a picture of St. Francis Xavier, patron of missionaries, asking to be sent on a mission. Three years later, when Auguste's health prevented him from traveling to Hawaiʻi as a missionary, the Pipus Order allowed Damien to take his place.
Mission in Hawaii
Assignment to Big Island
On 19 March 1864, Damien arrived at Honolulu Harbor on Oʻahu in the Hawaiian Islands. He was ordained into the priesthood on 21 May 1864, at what is now the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace In a letter to his parents in Belgium, Damien wrote:“Impossible to express how immensely happy a missionary is when he sees the new land that he must water with his sweat to gain uncivilized souls for Christ.”In 1865, Damien was assigned to the Catholic Mission in North Kohala on the island of Hawaii. During the next eight years, he served at missions in Puna, Kohala, and Hamakua.
Leprosy health crisis During the middle of the 19th century, many native Hawaiians had contracted leprosy. It is believed that Chinese workers carried leprosy to Hawaii during the 1830s and 1840s. At that time, before the advent of antibiotics, leprosy was considered incurable. The contagion of leprosy was greatly exaggerated also.
In 1865, King Kamehameha V and the Hawaiian Legislature passed the "Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy." This law required the quarantining of people with leprosy. Those with the most serious cases were relocated to Kalawao, a new settlement of leprosy patients on the Kalaupapa peninsula, part of the sparsely-settled island of Molokai. A steep mountain range separated Kalawao from the rest of the island. From 1866 through 1969, approximately 8,000 Hawaiians were sent to the Kalaupapa peninsula.
The Hawaiian government placed the Royal Board of Health in Honolulu in charge of Kalawao. The board initially provided the residents with food and other supplies, but no health care. The board planned for the residents to grow their own food and otherwise be self-sufficient. However, many residents did not plant crops because they expected an early release. In addition, the Hawaiian government reneged on its pledge to provided the residents with arable land. Contemporary and later accounts claimed that the residents were either too sick or too undisciplined to take care of their own needs.In 1870, Kalawao experienced several riots in protest over corruption by the superintendent installed by the Board of Health
Kalawao leprosy settlement
Bishop Louis Désiré Maigret, the vicar apostolic of Hawaii, wanted to assign a priest to Kalawao. However, believing that this was a high risk assignment due to the risk of contagion; Maigret did not want to force a priest to go there "in the name of obedience." After much prayer, Damien and three other priests volunteered to go to Kalawao. Maigret decided to rotate priest assignments in Kalawao every three months, with Damien selected as the first volunteer.
On 10 May 1873, Damien and Maigret arrived at Kalawao, which then had a population of 600 residents with leprosy. Maigret presented Damien to the community. Damien started working with the residents to build a church and establish the Parish of Saint Philomena. He conducted classes, painted houses, and helped with the construction of chapels, roads, hospitals, and churches. The residents established basic laws, working farms and schools.
He also dressed residents' ulcers, dined with them, shared tobacco pipes with them, and lived with them as equals .Damien told the residents that they were always precious in the eyes of God. In Late 1873, he wrote his brother Auguste, saying: "...I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ."At Damien's request, and the request of the residents of Kalawao, Maigret allowed him to stay there permanently.
Damien had frequent quarrels with the Board of Health as well as his own superiors. He was described by contemporaries as headstrong and single-minded. Despite his commitment to the residents, Damien recorded this analysis of Hawaiians:...the great majority, if not the total number of all pure natives, have the syphilitic blood very well developed in there system. The poisonous root has shot into different ramifications and in some instances, in the manner which we call leprosy...The Hawaiians in general are reputed to be very licentious...and they often become diseased.In 1877, Crown Princess Lydia Liliuokalani visited Kalawao during a trip to Molokai. Highly impressed with Damien's work, she later persuaded her brother, King David Kalākaua, to honor him as a knight commander of the Royal Order of Kalākaua.
In 1878, after the death of the current superintendent of Kalawao, who was half-Hawaiian, the Board of Health appointed Damien as his successor. The residents then started complained to the board about poor conditions at their hospital and asked that Damien be replaced by William Sumners, a man of mixed European and Hawaiian heritage. At one point, Damier ordered the arrest and deportation of a Protestant minister to Honolulu, claiming that he was fomenting rebellion against the Board of Health. Later that year, the Board replaced Damien with Sumners as superintendent.In 1883, Marianne Cope, founder of the Sisters of St. Francis of Syracuse, arrived in Kalawao with several sisters to take charge of its hospital.
Damien's work was reported to Europeans and Americans in order to raise funds for the Kalawao mission. Damien became internationally known in the United States and Europe. American Protestants raised large sums of money for his work. The Church of England sent food, medicine, clothing, and supplies to Kalawao.
Leprosy sufferer
In December 1884, while he was preparing to bathe, Damien inadvertently put his foot into scalding water, causing his skin to blister. Feeling no pain, Damien realized that he had contracted leprosy. Despite his illness, Damien continued to work.
In 1885, Masanao Goto, a Japanese leprologist, came to Honolulu and treated Damien. Goto believed that leprosy was caused by a diminution of the blood. His treatment consisted of nourishing foods, moderate exercise, frequent friction to the benumbed body parts, special ointments, and medical baths. The Goto treatments relieved some of Damien's symptoms and became very popular with the leprosy patients at Kalawao. Damien said that he only wanted treatment from Goto, who became a good friend.
Joseph Dutton, an American religious brother, came to the colony in 1886 to supervise the construction and maintenance of the community's buildings. In 1888, the Belgian priest Louis Lambert Conrady arrived on the island; he was to assume Damien's pastoral duties.James Sinnett, an American layperson, also arrived in Kalaweo in 1888 and became Damien's nurse.
Death
By the beginning of 1889, Damien had an arm in a sling and a foot in bandages, with his leg dragging. He was bedridden on 23 March 1889, and on 30 March, he made a general confession. Damien died of leprosy at Kalawao on 15 April 1889, at age 49.PBS, 23 January 2009, Father Damien's Legacy, Retrieved 11 September 2015
The next day, Damien's funeral mass was celebrated at St. Philomena's Church in Kalawao. The entire settlement then followed the funeral cortège to the parish cemetery. Damien was buried under the same pandanus tree where he first slept upon his arrival on Molokai.
Commentary after his death
Damien had become internationally known before his death because he was seen as a symbolic Christian figure who spent his life caring for the afflicted natives. His superiors thought that Damien lacked education and finesse, but they considered him to be "an earnest peasant hard at work in his own way for God."Daws (1984), Holy Man: Father Damien, p. 89 News of his death was quickly carried across the globe by the modern communications of the time, by steamship to Honolulu and California, telegraph to the East Coast of the United States, and cable to England, reaching London on the 11th of May.Daws (1984), Holy Man: Father Damien, p. 9 Following an outpouring of praise for his work, other voices began to be heard in Hawaii.
Hyde and Stevenson letters In August 1889, Reverend Charles McEwen Hyde, a Presbyterian minister in Honolulu, wrote about Damien to H. B. Gage, a pastor in San Francisco, California. In his letter, Hyde called Damien as "a coarse, dirty man," and claimed that he had contracted leprosy through sexual relations with women.Moblo, "Blessed Damien of Molokai" (1997). Note: At that time, "Carelessness" was a reference to the association of leprosy with syphilis, both of which were considered sexually transmitted diseases. Hyde also claimed that Damien received received credit for reforms at Kalaupapa that were implemented by the Royal Board of Health. Without consulting Hyde, Gage published the letter in a San Francisco newspaper, generating controversy on the American mainland and in Hawaii.Daws (1984), Holy Man: Father Damien, p. 12