“I make myself a leper with the lepers, to gain all for Jesus Christ.” Blessed Damien

Born in Belgium, 1840; died in Moloka’i of leprosy, April 15, 1889; beatified 1995 by Pope John Paul II.

When Damien Joseph de Veuster, a Belgian peasant, was 20 years old, he joined the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and four years later was sent on mission to Honolulu, where he arrived on the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1864.  He was ordained after two months in Honolulu and began serving. He was known for his fury at encountering secret and bloody, pagan rituals, often breaking them up on his own, and for his tender care for the sick and needy.

In 1873 he undertook the greatest work of his life when he volunteered to minister to, and live among, the colony of almost a thousand lepers who were quarantined on the island of Moloka’i and were stranded without any pastoral care or access to the Sacraments. He knew full well that he would almost surely contract the disease and die.

The island was also known for its violence and lawlessness, and there was no civil society established among the despairing and hopeless lepers, who had been banished and forgotten by the world, and each had to work out his own survival, often at the expense of others.

When Damien arrived he immediately set about putting social order and establishing a rule of law.  He renovated a dilapidated little wooden chapel and began celebrating mass, and in time the collection of lepers on the island dveloped a community ethic.

Four more priests, and a group of nuns, joined him on the island, inspired by his example.

In 1885 he was diagnosed with leprosy, saying it was “a short cut to heaven” and he carried on serving his parishioners for four more years until he passed on to his eternal reward.

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