Father Damien

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Father Damien
Blessed Damien was a Roman Catholic missionary who helped lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.
Confessor; Leper Priest; Greatest Belgian
Born	January 3, 1840(1840-01-03), Tremelo, Belgium
Died	April 15, 1889 (aged 49), Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaii
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church; Anglican Communion; individual Lutheran Churches
Beatified	June 4, 1995, Rome by Pope John Paul II
Canonized	expected October 11, 2009, Rome by Pope Benedict XVI
Major shrine	Leuven, Belgium (bodily relics); Maui, Hawaii (relics of his hand)
Feast	May 10 (universal); April 15 (in Hawaii)
Attributes	leprosy; tree and dove
Patronage	people with leprosy, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS, the State of Hawaii.

Damien de Veuster, SS.CC. (January 3, 1840 – April 15, 1889), born Jozef de Veuster and also known as Blessed Damien of Molokai (Dutch: Pater Damiaan or Zalige Damiaan de Veuster), was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,^[1] a missionary religious order. He is to become a saint on 11 October 2009. He won recognition for his ministry to people with leprosy (also known as Hansen's Disease), who had been placed under a government-sanctioned medical quarantine on the island of Molokai in the Kingdom of Hawaii.^[2] He eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is widely considered a "martyr of charity".

In the Roman Catholic and Anglican communions, as well as other denominations of Christianity, Damien is considered the spiritual patron for Hansen's Disease, HIV and AIDS patients, and 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 by Pope John Paul II in Rome on June 4, 1995, Blessed Damien was granted a memorial feast day, which is celebrated on May 10. On February 21, 2009, the Vatican announced that Father Damien would be canonized on October 11, 2009 completing the process of canonization.^[3] The Catholic Encyclopedia calls him "the Apostle of the Lepers",^[4] and elsewhere he is known as the "leper priest".

Several memorials have been made to Damien worldwide, from Belgium and the United States to Ireland and Ecuador. The Father Damien Statue honors the priest in bronze in Statuary Hall 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 that country's history in polling conducted by the Flemish public broadcasting service, VRT.^[5]

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 and poor treatment of lepers. Several Damien Centers have been established worldwide to serve people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.^[6][7][8]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Mission to Hawaii 3 Illness and death 3.1 Order of Kalakaua 4 Canonization process 5 Criticism and commentary 5.1 Robert Louis Stevenson 5.2 Catholic Church 6 Legacy 7 Re-tellings of his story 8 See also 9 References 10 Sources 11 External links

[edit] Early life

Damien was born Jozef ("Jef") de Veuster, the seventh child of the Flemish 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, Damien in French) in his first vows, presumably in reference to Saint Damian.^[9]

Following in the footsteps of his brother Auguste (Father Pamphile), Damien became a Picpus Brother on October 7, 1860.^[10][11] Due to illness, Auguste could not travel to Hawaii as a missionary, so Damien went in his place.

[edit] Mission to Hawaii

On March 19, 1864, Father Damien landed at Honolulu Harbor in downtown Honolulu as a missionary. There, Damien was ordained to the priesthood on May 21, 1864 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, a church established by his religious order.^[12] In 1865, he was assigned to the Catholic Mission in North Kohala on the island of Hawai‘i.

While he was serving in several parishes on the island of Oahu, the Kingdom of Hawaii was facing a public health crisis. The Native Hawaiians became afflicted by diseases inadvertently introduced to their islands by foreign traders and sailors. Thousands died of influenza, syphilis and other ailments which had never before affected them. This included the plight of leprosy (Hansen's disease). Fearful of its spread, King Kamehameha V quarantined the lepers of the kingdom and moved them to a settlement colony known as Kalaupapa on the north side of the island of Moloka‘i. Kalawao County, where the village is situated, is divided from the rest of the island by a steep mountain ridge, and even today the only land access is by a mule track. The Royal Board of Health provided the quarantined people with supplies and food but did not yet have the resources to offer proper healthcare. According to documents from the time, the Kingdom of Hawaii did not plan the settlement to be in disarray but did not provide sufficient resources and medical help.^[13] They planned on the inhabiting sufferers to grow their own crops, but due to the nature of the environment and their sickness, it was nearly impossible. By 1868, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), "Drunken and lewd conduct prevailed. The easy-going, good-natured people seemed wholly changed."^[14]

While Monsignor 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 Monsignor Maigret for permission to go to Molokai. On 10 May 1873, Father Damien arrived at the secluded settlement at Kalaupapa, where Bishop Maigret presented him to the 816 lepers living there 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."^{[cite this quote]} Damien's first course of action was to build a church and establish the Parish of Saint Philomena. His role was not limited to being a priest: he dressed ulcers, built homes and beds, built coffins and dug graves.^[15]

Damien's arrival is seen by some 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.

[edit] Illness and death

As indicated in his 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 this discovery, residents say that Damien worked vigorously to build as many homes as he could and planned for the continuation of the programs he created after he was gone.

Masanao Goto, a Japanese leprologist, came to Honololu in 1885 and treated Father Damien. It was his theory that leprosy was caused by a diminution of the blood, and his treatment consisted of nourishing food, moderate exercise, frequent friction to the benumbed parts, special ointments and medical baths. The treatments did, indeed, relieve some of the symptoms and were very popular with the Hawaiian patients. Father Damien, too, had faith in the treatments and stated, "I have not the slightest confidence in our American and European doctors to stay my leprosy, I wish to be treated by Dr. Masanao Goto."^{[16][17][18][19]} Dr. Goto was one of his best friends. ^[20]His last trip to Honolulu on July 10, 1886, was made to receive treatment from Dr. Goto.

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; 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. Father Damien died of leprosy on April 15, 1889, aged 49.

He was originally buried on Molokai, but in 1936, the Belgian government asked for the return of his body, which was brought back on the ship Mercator and which is now buried in Leuven, a city close to the village where he was born. After his beatification by the Roman Catholic Church part of his body was returned to Hawaii.

[edit] Order of Kalakaua

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.

[edit] Canonization process

Two miracles attributed to Father Damien (posthumously) have been claimed: On June 13, 1992, Pope John Paul II approved the cure of a nun in France in 1895 as a miracle attributed to Venerable Damien’s intercession. In that case, Sister Simplicia Hue begun a novena to Father Damien as she lay dying of a lingering intestinal illness. It is stated that pain and symptoms of the illness disappeared overnight.

In the second case, Audrey Toguchi, a Hawaiian woman who suffered from cancer, claimed that after she prayed at the grave of Father Damien on Molokai, her cancer had completely disappeared:^[21]

In 1997, Toguchi was diagnosed with liposarcoma, a cancer that arises in fat cells. She underwent surgery a year later. A tumor the size of a fist was removed from the side of her left thigh and buttock. Unfortunately, the cancer spread to her lungs. Her physician, Dr. Walter Chang, told her, "Nobody has ever survived this cancer. It's going to take you."^[22]

However, this is in contrast with a widely quoted 2003 story that "She had absolutely no treatment, not even a diet".^[23] Dr. Richard Schilsky, a University of Chicago cancer specialist who is president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said it's "highly likely" that the lung had already been seeded with liposarcoma cells when her original tumor was found. "The point here is that the primary tumor was treated," and that could have helped her immune system control any remaining cancer in her body, said Dr. Schilsky. ^[24]

On June 4, 1995, Pope John Paul II beatified Father Damien and gave him his official spiritual title of Blessed. 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 feast Day is celebrated on May 10. In Hawaii, it is celebrated on the day of his death, April 15.

In April 2008, The Holy See ruled that Father Damien was indeed responsible for two miracles attributed to him. On June 2, 2008, The Congregation of the Causes of Saints at the Vatican voted to recommend raising Father Damien of Molokai to sainthood. The decree that officially notes and verifies the miracle needed for canonization was promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI and Jose Cardinal Saraiva Martins on Thursday, July 3, 2008, with the ceremony taking place in Rome, with celebrations in Belgium and Hawaii. ^[25] On February 21, 2009, the Vatican announced that Father Damien would be canonized on October 11, 2009 completing the process of canonization^[3]. His symbols are a tree and a dove. In Blessed Damien's role as the unofficial 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, Quebec is consecrated to him.

[edit] Criticism and commentary

[edit] Robert Louis Stevenson

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 out of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in Hawaii. It has been argued for decades that these church leaders took a stance against Damien largely out of spite for Catholicism in general. They derided Damien as a "false shepherd" who was driven by personal ambition and ego. The most well-known treatise against Damien was by a Honolulu Presbyterian, Reverend C. M. Hyde, in a letter dated 2 August 1889 to a fellow pastor, Reverend H. B. Gage, who submitted it to a religious publication. Reverend Hyde wrote:

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.^[26]

Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, also a Presbyterian, drafted a famous open letter as a rebuttal in defense of Damien. The Catholic Encyclopedia judges that in this treatise "the memory of the Apostle of the Lepers is brilliantly vindicated".^[4] Prior to writing his philippic, dated 25 February 1890, Stevenson stayed in Molokai for eight days and seven nights, during which he kept a diary.^[26] In addition to calling Reverend Hyde a "crank," Stevenson answered his criticisms point by point.^[26] He sought testimony from critical Protestants who knew the man, which he recorded in his diary. The treatise included some extracts, such as:

He seems to have been a man of the peasant class, certainly of the peasant type: shrewd, ignorant and bigoted, yet with an open mind, and capable of receiving and digesting a reproof if it were bluntly administered; superbly generous in the least thing as well as in the greatest, and as ready to give his last shirt (although not without human grumbling) as he had been to sacrifice his life; essentially indiscreet and officious, which made him a troublesome colleague; domineering in all his ways, which made him incurably unpopular with the Kanakas, but yet destitute of real authority, so that his boys laughed at him and he must carry out his wishes by the means of bribes.^[26]

Stevenson further defended Fr. Damien and ubraided Rev. Hyde for his fault finding:

But, sir, 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. One thing remained to you in your defeat - some rags of common honour; and these you have made haste to cast away.

^[27] In writing to Hyde, Stevenson proved prescient: “if that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named a Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage” Stevenson further chided Hyde for nit-picking Damien and failing to acknowledge his heroic virtue: “you are one of those who have an eye for faults and failures; that you take a pleasure to find and publish them; and that, having found them, you make haste to forget the overvailing virtues and the real success which had alone introduced them to your knowledge. It is a dangerous frame of mind.".^[28]

Stevenson then comments on his own journal entries:

...I have set down these private passages, as you perceive, without correction; thanks to you, the public has them in their bluntness. They are almost a list of the man's faults, for it is rather these that I was seeking: with his virtues, with the heroic profile of his life, I and the world were already sufficiently acquainted. I was besides a little suspicious of Catholic testimony; in no ill sense, but merely because Damien's admirers and disciples were the least likely to be critical. I know you will be more suspicious still; and the facts set down above were one and all collected from the lips of Protestants who had opposed the father in his life. Yet I am strangely deceived, or they build up the image of a man, with all his weakness, essentially heroic, and alive with rugged honesty, generosity, and mirth.^[26]

The Catholic Encyclopedia further states that a correspondence in the "Pacific Commercial Advertiser", 20 June 1905, "completely removes from the character of Father Damien every vestige of suspicion, proving beyond a doubt that Dr. Hyde's insinuations rested merely on misunderstandings".^[4]

[edit] Catholic Church

In the process of examining Damien's fitness for beatification and canonization, the Roman Curia reviewed documentation of published and unpublished criticisms against the missionary's life and work. Diaries and interviews were considered. In the end it was decided that Damien met the standards for beatification and canonization.

Mahatma Gandhi offered his own defense of Father 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, Gandhi Looks at Leprosy, as saying, "The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism."

[edit] Legacy

Damien is considered an important person in the History of Hawaii. The Father Damien Statue on the steps of the State Capitol Building honors him, and a replica is displayed in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol.^[29] The Blessed Damien Society was set up in his name. Damien Centers or Damien Ministries cater for the needs of people with HIV and AIDS^[30] and, still, for leprosy, for example in Guayaquil, Ecuador.^[31] Schools are named after him.^[32] There is a chapel named after him, and dedicated to people with HIV/AIDS, in St. Thomas the Apostle Hollywood.^[33] A centre for "peace for families and individuals affected by bereavement, stress, violence, and other difficulties with particular attention to Northern Ireland".^[34]

[edit] Re-tellings of his story

Director David Miller made the short film of Father Damien's life in 1938 with the movie The Great Heart. Carey Wilson recieved an Oscar nomination for his narration in this film.

The one-man play Damien, written by Aldyth Morris and first performed in 1976, tells the story of Damien's life in the first person through a series of flashbacks. A performance starring Terence Knapp was broadcast on PBS in 1978 and again in 1986.

Father Damien was portrayed in 1980 by Ken Howard in the television film "Father Damien: Leper Priest."^[35]

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. American John Briley, who had won an Academy Award the screenplay of Gandhi, and had worked on Cry Freedom, was chosen to write Molokai: The Story of Father Damien. Paul Cox, who had completed an independent movie about the artist Vincent van Gogh, was selected to direct the project. Australian David Wenham was chosen to play the lead, and other actors include Derek Jacobi, Kris Kristofferson, Sam Neill, Tom Wilkinson and Peter O'Toole. The movie was released on March 17, 2000.^[36]

[edit] See also

• Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement and National Historical Park

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Father Damien

• Daws, Gavan (1984). Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0824809203. 
• Eynikel, Hilde (1999). Molokai: the Story of Father Damien. Staten Island: Alba House. ISBN 0818908726. 
• Stewart, Richard (2000). Leper Priest of Moloka'i. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0824823222. 

[edit] External links

• Robert Louis Stevenson, Father Damian. An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu
• Kalaupapa National Historic Park - about the human and natural community of Father Damien's work
• Molokai: The Story of Father Damien - IMDB.com's article about the movie