Damien De Veuster, popularly known as Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai (Dutch: Pater Damiaan or Heilige Damiaan van Molokai; 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 Molokaʻi, 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.
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.
Damien 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.
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 Hawaiʻi. During the next eight years, he served at missions in Puna, Kohala, and Hamakua.
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 Molokaʻi. 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
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 Liliʻuokalani 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 complaining 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, Damien 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.