Saint of the Lepers

Kalaupapa doesn’t fall on the standard Hawaiian tourist circuit. It’s not known for its pristine beaches, however fine they may be, nor for its tropical cuisine or music or ambiance. It is, however, a place of history and pilgrimage, particularly now that Fr. Damien’s canonization is expected later this year.

Only a hundred people still call Kalaupapa home, but, between 1866 and 1969, this Hawaiian peninsula was home to over 8,000 exiled lepers, who, torn from their families, fought for a meager existence on the wild terrain. Fr. Damien wasn’t the first caregiver to come to the island, but unlike his predecessors who didn’t dare do more than leave medicine on a fencepost, he looked on the lepers as a family—his family. Yesterday’s Washington Times describes the heroic man , still loved as a father by the two dozen elderly lepers remaining on the island:

Damien, born in Belgium as Joseph de Veuster, stood out because he stayed and put no barriers between himself and the patients. He built homes, constructed a water system, and imported cattle. He had no medical training, but he did have a medical book and a bag, and he made rounds washing and bandaging patient’s sores . . . .

He shared his pipe with patients and ate from the same bowl. Even before he contracted Hansen’s disease, Damien began his sermons saying, “We lepers.”

Damien was diagnosed with leprosy 12 years after he arrived at Kalaupapa and died four years later, at age 49.