In 1873 the Kalaupapa Peninsula had just undergone 8 years of turmoil and upheavel when a young Father Damien arrived to change world history. Lonely Kalaupapa Peninsula on the north central coast of Molokai is hemmed in by forbidding 1500-2000 foot (458-666 meters) cliffs ("pali" in Hawaiian) to the south and hostile pounding surf to the north. Thus isolated and cut off from the rest of civilization, it was deemed an ideal location to build a leper colony. Thus, on the Kalaupapa Peninsula new settlements first at Kalawao and then Kalaupapa were founded by double tragedies. The indiginous Hawaiians who had dwelled on the Kalaupapa Peninsula and called the area "home" for over 1,200 years were unceremoneously uprooted and displaced elsewhere while the outcasts from the other islands who had been stricken with leprosy were banished to Kalaupapa Peninsula on Molokai by order of King Kamehameha V and they were left to face slow, agonizing deaths in unfamiliar surroundings in what was to become a new county, Kalawao County. There was no harbor at Kalaupapa (though Damien and his workers were soon to build one) and the condemned lepers brought there by ship, were simply tossed into the waters offshore and many of them drowned, though others miraculously made it to shore where many perished in hours or days. Of the lepers shipped to Molokai, over half died before reaching the land of Kalaupapa Peninsula. Of those who reached land, many died of hunger and cold because their disabilities prevented them from helping themselves. Of those who stayed for an appreciable amount of time, in all, more than 8,000 outcasts lived in the leprosy colonies on Molokai. Only 1,300 people buried at Kalaupapa have marked tombstones, meaning over 7,000 lepers were buried in unmarked graves. When the forced isolation began, the first group of leprosy patients departed from Honolulu Harbor in 1866 on the schooner
Warwick. Mysteriously, the government provided a scant and insufficient measure of clothing, food and other supplies to the spurned lepers, but no medical attention was offered! The capturing and taking leprosy patients to Molokai continued until 1940. After the practice stopped in 1940 those who were already at the leper prison were not free to leave the settlement even though a cure for Hansen's disease had been found. Their forced internement conintued until 1969. Though after 1940 many people had voluntarily gone to live in Kalaupapa to be treated for leprosy. Even so, after 1969 most chose to stay after the forced imprisonment ended because Kalaupapa had become their homes. In 1909 the
Molokai Light (tallest American lighthouse in the Pacific) was built to guide ships into Honolulu harbor and to warn people of the dangers of the Kalaupapa and Kalawao leper colonies. An excellent fictionalized account of the Kalaupapa Leper Colony where people killed one another just to survive, can be found in the book
Hawaii by James A. Michener. Many men, women and children, and as late as 1940, were shipped off to the colony on the merest suspicion of having leprosy when sometimes it was a mere skin rash or irritation. One such person who arrived at Kalaupapa in 1940 still lives there and is a tour guide. Today leprosy is called Hansen's Disease and former Hansen's Disease patients conduct informative tours which reveal the history of the former leper colonies.
Isolating lepers into colonies for outcasts had been a normal practice for thousands of years and people were loath to abandon practices that had been in place for millennia. One of humankind's oldest curses, leprosy, for centuries defied cure or remedy. To prevent its spread, Moses had separated and isolated Jews afflicted by leprosy from communities. Roman legions and, later, Crusaders brought the disease to Europe. Authorities, having no better remedy than Moses had, ordered lepers segregated from the cities and towns. Lepers were ordered to wear bells around their necks to warn people of their approach. By the year 1000, monks had constructed more than two thousand leper hospitals in Europe. They were called Lazar houses after the Gospel's poor leper, Lazarus. Friars often lived in hidden leper settlements, serving the outcasts' physical and spiritual needs. When he left Belgium and when he went to Molokai, Damien was well aware of the millennia long plight of lepers and the fate of the friars and monks who tended to the afflicted. Like their precursors, the Hawaiian government knew of no other solution than segregation and isolation of lepers to protect the rest of the populace. And the time came that the words Kalawao, Kalaupapa and Molokai struck terror into the hearts of people in Hawaii.
When the colony was established, only one dollar ($1) per leper per year had been allotted to provide housing, food and clothing. Many died from privation and suffered long before going to their ignoble deaths. Finally a much larger sum was provided for the inhabitants of the leper colonies, but, it was still far from sufficient to fulfill their needs or allay their bitter suffering. Kaulaupapa, Molokai was a colony of misery and shame, peopled by lost refugees and disease ravaged bodies of rotting flesh. A Honolulu newspaper decried the horrors of Molokai claiming there was not enough for the lepers to eat and printed the following description: "'Fifty cents per week is allowed each person for food and out of this we must also provide sugar and salt.' They need warm wear, 'not the thin, rotten clothing that is now brought here-----a useless waste of money.' They wanted but lacked basic mail service as the letters they sent never reached their destinations. They were lonely and longed for visits from those who cared for them and finally they wanted decent burials: 'Let our dead be provided with coffins or else let us be furnished with the materials for making them . . .'" The dispelled lepers not only suffered from the agonies of their disease, but the cruelty of being abandoned by the world. Who would hear their prayers?
In 1873, the seventh and youngest child of a Belgian, or more accurately a Flemish farmer and corn merchant, Joseph de Veuster, born Jozef de Veuster, (sometimes misspelled as Damien de Vuester) who went by the nickname, "Jef", and is better known to the world as Father Damien, arrived in Kalaupapa from the Kohala district of the Big Island of Hawaii and worked tirelessly to ease the suffering of the pariahs of society on Molokai. Father Jozef Damian de Veuster is also known as Damiaan De Veuster, Pater Damiaan Padre Damian, Santo Damian and other variations of his name. Damien's name in Hawaiian is Kamieni ki Wiukeli and his given name, Joseph de Veuster is Iokepa ki Wiukeli. Father Damien was born of peasant stock in Tremeloo (Tremelo) in Flemish Brabant, Belgium on January 30, 1840. Jozef de Veuster's father sent him to the College of Braine-le-Comte to study French and prepare for a commercial profession. Jef had applied to an American university, but his entrance was denied due to his poor knowledge of Latin and French and because of "his rudeness in manner and appearance". While as a college student, in his heart at 18 years of age, and in his mind at the age of 19, Jef decided to follow in his older brother's footsteps and enter the novitiate of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in nearby Leuven, (Louvain) Belgium taking the name Damianus (Damiaan in Dutch) in his first vows in 1860. The name was taken after St. Damianus, a Christian physician who offered medical services to the poor, free of charge. Damianus was highly praised for his generosity and his healing of the sick and disabled. Damianus was born in Arabia and educated in Egypt where he practiced medicine. After the cruelest tortures imaginable, Damianus (Damien) and his brother, St. Cosmas, also a physician, and several other Christians were martyred (beheaded) circa 303 A.D. during the "Great Persecution" by Roman Emperor Diocletian, who worshipped the Roman god, Jupiter and sought to re-establish the Roman pantheon of Gods and rid the empire of Chistians and Jews.
Joseph’s older brother, Auguste, now Fr. Pamphile was instrumental as a tutor in French and Latin for his younger brother, Jozef. Father Pamphile, had a great influence on his brother, Damien, throughout their lives.
Convinced that the missionary priesthood was the life that God had willed for him, at age 18, Damien wrote to his parents. "Dear Parents, I could not fail to write you on this beautiful Christmas day, which assures me that the Holy Will of God is that I leave the world and embrace the religious state. So, dear parents, I ask you once again if you would be happy about this, since without being sure you are content, I would not dare to commit myself to such a state. Obedience to one’s parents is one of God’s commandments, not only in our childhood but also when we have reached the age of reason. You must not believe, dear parents, that it is only my will that I embrace the holy state, but I assure you that it is the Holy Will of Divine Providence."
Prior to turning 19 years of age, it appeared that Jef had become "bound and determined" to enter religious life and he confirmed his desire to serve the church as a priest. In the same letter he wrote: "You know, dear Parents, that we must choose the state that God has predestined for us, so as to be happy in the next life. This is why you must not be distressed because God is calling me to this state."
Though still in minor orders, Damien came from Belgium as a missionary to Hawaii in 1864 and lived on several of the Hawaiian Islands, including Molokai, and in short order, he became a deacon before being ordained a priest in on 24 May 1864 at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Cathedral in Honolulu on the Island of Oahu. Prior to being ordained, Damien studied on the windward side of the island of Oahu before being transfered to Kohala on the Big Island of Hawaii. In spite of his youth, Damien was soon given charge of various districts on the island of Hawaii and being animated with burning enthusiasm, his robust constitution allowed him to give full play to the impulses of his heart. He was not only the missionary of the natives, but the man who constructed several chapels with his own hands, both on the island of Hawaii and later on Molokai. Father Damien de Veuster will be officially canonized as St. Damien de Veuster on Sunday, 11 October 2009 in Rome. St. Damien, will be America's newest saint and Hawaii's patron saint. Michener's book Hawaii dramatically portrays the lawlessness and the hopelessness in the leper colony prior to the arrival of the Catholic missionary whose work was to lead to sainthood. Ironically, it was Damien de Veuster's brother, Auguste, who had become Father Pamphile, who had been slated to become a missionary to Hawaii, but, Father Damien went in his stead when his brother fell ill from typhus disease while ministering to the sick people stricken during the typhus epidemic. Since typhus required a long recuperation, Father Pamphile wasn't able to sail to Hawaii. This left one berth available for a missionary on the ship. Damien, not yet a deacon, wrote to the Superior General asking for permission to take his brother's place on the ship sailing for Hawaii. The General gave his consent and Damien left for a new homeland in Hawaii and unbeknownst to him or anyone else was destined to change history.
Monsignor Louis Désiré Maigret, SS.CC., vicar apostolic of what was then called the "Sandwich Islands" by Americans and Europeans, and the "Kingdom of Hawaii" by Hawaiians, Polynesians and Asians, decided that at the very least Kaluapapa needed a priest to minister to the needs of the exiled lepers and others in the colony. Mnsr. Maigret also knew that the assignment was a potential death sentence. Priests selected for the mission to the leper colonies were to stay for 3 month periods of time and rotate with other priests selected for the missions. Following careful prayer and letters to his superiors in Hawaii and Belgium, Fr. Damien, knowing it could be a sentence to death, volunteered for the mission to Molokai. In April, 1873, Father Damien wrote to his Father General in Europe about his mission in Kohala, Hawaii, where he was stationed. "Many of our Christians here at Kohala also had to go to Molokai. I can only attribute to God an undeniable feeling that soon I shall join them.... Eight years of service among Christians you love and love you have tied us by powerful bonds." After reading the letter of permission over and over, granting his wish to go to Kalaupapa, particularly where the letter stated: "You may stay as long as your devotion dictates" he rejoiced at being selected for the mission. Maigret accompanied Damien and a shipload of lepers to Molokai and proudly presented the new pastor to the lepers. Maigret and Damien arrived in Kalaupapa on 10 May 1873. After two days Damien was willing to devote the rest of his life to the leper settlement.
Among Damien's first orders of business on arriving at the leprosarium was to establish a house of worship. The first chapel on Molokai was to be enlarged twice later. Damien built a stone church and he built a rectory. The parish was named St. Philomena's in memory of a woman whose biography had been a great influence on Damien's faith. St. Philomena was said to have great success in healing the the disabled, the diseased and the terminally ill. And many years later, another woman in India, Mother Teresa who also cared for lepers was greatly inspired by the humble Father Damien de Veuster. In all, Father Damien and his Leper assistants built four churches. The
St. Joseph Church built in 1876 and Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Church built in 1874 are still standing. The photo of Our Lady of 7 Sorrows is large enough to use as widescreen wallpaper.
St. Philomena Church on Molokai
Click Photo to Open it in a Separate Window
The breaths of the lepers were fetid and the odors of their decaying bodies was foul. In addition to their spiritual needs, Fr. Damien ministerd to the colonists' physical needs: he tidied their rooms and beds; he washed their bodies; he dressed and bandaged their wounds, blisters and ulcers; he washed the emaciated, deformed and horribly disfigured dead bodies; he amputated gangrenous limbs; he physically embraced them; he dined with them; he heard their confessions; he said mass every morning and also said many funeral masses; he built homes and beds; he taught catechism classes, erected and administered the local schools; planted orchards; imported cattle; encouraged the inhabitants to help him build a road between Kalawao and Kalaupapa and build an aquaduct from a distant spring to supply water for the settlement; he erected a home for orphan boys then built a home for orphan girls; he made coffins and dug graves. Damien himself constructed over 2,000 caskets by hand. At the same time Damien studied new ways of treating leprosy and lepers and experimented with new medications. When a hurricane destroyed the exiled leper's shabby huts, Damien petitioned the Board of Health for lumber and three hundred houses were built by and for the sick. Many of the buildings are still standing. Like many children raised on farms the priest was a skillful carpenter. No construction project daunted him. Damien taught his people to farm, to plant and reap crops, to raise animals, to play musical instruments, to sing. He watched with pride as the leper bands he organized marched up and down playing the music Hawaiians love so well. No self-pity in this colony. Damien's cheerful disposition and desire to serve touched the lepers' hearts without patronizing or bullying them. Little by little their accomplishments restored the sense of dignity their illness had threatened to destroy. Damien made the lepers' last days wholesome, constructive and fulfilling. One of Father Damien's key words was "participation". Damien also offered a context of celebration; he encouraged festivity to provide hope in the experience of decay and frustration. Damien had only intermittent coworkers from outside, so, instead he recruited and trained coworkers from the ranks of the lepers. The "prayer leaders" were the members of his team ministry, and his "model parish" eventually grew to become a sign of hope. In all things his lepers came first. Damien harried the government authorities. In their eyes and the eyes of some Protestant clergymen he was "stubborn, obstinate, headstrong, brusk and officious." Soon, under his leadership the place went from being totally lawless to a functioning community. Kalaupapa also became known for having the best treatment of lepers anywhere in the world for its time.
When priests were on board ships bringing supplies and new ostracized lepers to the colony, the captains of the vessels refused to disembark or to let let the priests go ashore and they barred Father Damien from boarding the ship to confess his sins to the other priests. Confession is an important Catholic sacrament. During one such time when the isolation policy was being strictly enforced, a ship's captain, reacting to the government's orders, forbade Damien's bishop to disembark on Molokai. In order to see the bishop, Damien sailed out to the boat. The captain refused Damien's request to board. The priest pleaded in vain with the captain, saying that he wanted to confess his sins. "Bishop," the priest called to the boat, "will you hear my confession from here?" The bishop consented, and Damien in an exercise of humility that touched all who witnessed it, confessed his sins aloud to the bishop. Damien missed his religious collegues and spoke of his "black thoughts" and the "insupportable melancholy that arose from his lack of religious companionship." In December of 1884, Fr. Damien discovered that he had contracted leprosy, which nowdays is known as Hansen's disease. Damien had become infected with the most virulent strain of Leprosy. But Damien's discovery of his disease didn't stop him from continuing to care for his flock. He dug in more fervently to finish work he'd already started and he began amibitious new projects knowing the end was near.
It is written that "No man has greater love than he who would lay down his life for his friends." That is exactly what Father Damien did.
The announcement that Damien had leprosy hit his own religious superiors, Father Fouesnel and his bishop, Hermann Koeckemann, like a thunderbolt. Damien was the third Sacred Hearts missionary stricken with leprosy. To prevent further infection, Father Fouesnel forbade Damien to visit the mission headquarters of the Sacred Hearts Fathers in Honolulu.
Charles Warren Stoddard, an American writer, first visited Molokai in 1868, five years before Damien's arrival. Stoddard returned in 1884. In place of the miserable huts of the colony's beginning, Stoddard now found two villages of white houses, surrounded by flower gardens and cultivated fields. Kalaupapa boasted a decent hospital, a graveyard, and two orphanages filled with children. But what delighted Stoddard most of all was that the men and women, instead of rotting in the slime, awaiting death, were out horseback-riding and rejoicing in their last days on Earth. The lepers said of Damien, "He takes good care of us and doesn't let us want for anything."
Slowly, the peninsula, under the watchful eye of the seemingly tireless priest, had became a place to live rather than a place to die.
"His cassock was worn and faded, his hair tumbled like a school-boy’s, his hands stained and hardened by toil; but the glow of health was in his face, the buoyancy of youth in his manner; while his ringing laugh, his ready sympathy, and his inspiring magnetism told of one who in any sphere might do a noble work, and who in that which he has chosen is doing the noblest of all works. This was Father Damien."
~ Charles Warren Stoddard
The famous British watercolorist and artist, Edward Clifford, who made the portrait of young Damien de Veuster shown below wrote from the leper colony at Kalaupapa in a letter dated 30th December 1888, "I have now been here nearly a fortnight. There are 1030 lepers here, well-cared for, not generally suffering pain, and in most cases being light-hearted and happy. Their air is very soft and pleasant, even when the wind is high and gusty. Enormous cliffs close in the leper settlement and make it almost inaccessible from the other parts of the island, and the sea is so wild that often even a boat cannot land. When I arrived I had to come on shore at a precipitous rock at some distance from the village. Father Damien met me there, having with him about twenty lepers. He gave me a hearty, affectionate welcome, and as it was too rough to have my large case landed. I had it unpacked in the boat, and all the presents taken out one by one, handed across the waves and carried by the lepers to Kalawao. [Among the gifts] the Ariston, (a sort of little barrel-organ, with many hymn tunes, the lepers love to turn it), and many pictures and books. Damien is just what you would expect him to be: a simple, sturdy, hard-working, devout man. No job was too menial for him: building, carpentering, tending the sick, washing the dead, and many other such things form part of his daily work. He is always cheerful, often playful, and one of the most truly humble men I ever saw. The leprosy has disfigured him a good deal, but I never feel it anything but a pleasure to look at him.... I was very glad to be here at Christmas. You would have enjoyed the hearty way in which the lepers sang "O come all ye faithful".... He is more happy and contented than many people who have health, wealth and friends, and it has come to him through his illness. Father Damien has told me today that for the first time for months he has been able to sing again."
In Damien's eyes, God loved the lepers and he felt that no human being had the right to scorn them. Even before he had the disease, Damien always referred to his parishioners as "we lepers" and in a letter to his brother in Belgium he stated: "That is why, in preaching, I say 'we lepers'; not, 'my brethren....'"
Mahatma Gandhi offered his own defense of Father Damien's beliefs and actions. Father Damien's life and works, according to Gandhi, served as an inspiration for his social campaigns in India that led to the freedom of Gandhi's people and secured aid for those who needed it. Gandhi was quoted in M.S. Mehendale’s 1971 account called "Gandhi Looks at Leprosy" as saying, "The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Moloka'i. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism."
King David Kalakaua I bestowed on Damien the honor of Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalakaua I. His daughter, soon to become Queen, Princess Lydia Liliuokalani (Liliʻuokalani), who had visited the leper colonies on Molokai and who bestowed the medal of the order on Father Damien, spread the story far and wide of what Fr. Damien was doing in Kalaupapa. The news resulted in the Kalaupapa leper colony seeing a huge influx of money, food, medicine, clothing, supplies and especially volunteers who were nuns, priests and nurses to help Father Damien with his unending work. In Honolulu, American Protestants were among Damien's most generous contributors. An Anglican priest in England, Reverend Hugh Chapman, organized, through the help of the London Times, a highly successful fund drive which also brought about the creation of a commission for the scientific investigation of the leprosy. The international publicity caused researchers elsewhere to increase their efforts at finding a cure for for the dread disease and help for those cursed by its ravages.
Donations flooded into the offices of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Paris, in Belgium and in Honolulu. Due to their suspicions of the various non-Catholic benefactors, however, Father Damien’s superiors refused to send him the money.
Month after month and year after year, Father Damien would write letters to his superiors begging for money. It was desperately needed in a place that was so poor and where everything needed to be repaired. Eventually, the superiors sent Father Damien some of the funds that they had received from abroad. Yet when Father Damien complained that it wasn’t enough, he was told that he would have to be satisfied with what he received.
Father Damien became a cause celebre not only in the wider world, but also among scientists who carefully examined his cause in order to determine the causes of leprosy and how it could be prevented. For years Damien had also entreated his superiors to send an assistant to help Damien with his tasks and to offer spiritual companionship. None was forthcoming until the world took notice of the humble priest toiling on Molokai.
One of the volunteers roused by the international attention to Father Damien and the plight of lepers everywhere was a former soldier, Joseph Dutton, who was a most unusual man. Dutton had survived combat in the American Civil War, a broken marriage and several years of hard drinking, to show up on Molokai's shores in July, 1886. He stayed forty-five years without ever leaving the colony. He served the lepers of the Baldwin Home for Boys. Joseph Dutton was never seriously ill until shortly before his death in 1931. He was just short of the age of eighty-eight.
Another layman, James Sinnett, a man who had a colorful and checkered career, during which he gained some experience in nursing at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, came to Molokai eight months before Father Damien died. The leper priest called him "Brother James." He nursed Father Damien during the final phase of his illness, and closed his eyes in death. During the last days of Damien's life, Sinnett served as Damien's secretary. He was faithful to the very end, and when Damien died, Sinnett left the colony. Nothing was heard from him thereafter and the rest Sinnett's life remains a mystery.
Father Louis-Lambert Conrardy, SSCC, a fellow Belgian, joined Father Damien May 17, 1888. Archbishop William Gross of Oregon generously permitted Father Conrardy to leave his own priest-poor area to labor in Molokai. Archbishop Gross wrote of Conrardy: "I have trampled all over Oregon with Father Conrardy and he is a noble, heroic man.... Though he knows and realizes perfectly that he might succomb to the disease, his voluntary going is real heroism." Conrardy and Damien joined in their unreserved dedication to the lepers. Along with these deeds, Conrardy provided the spiritual and social companionship that Damien so desperately craved.
A Catholic nun, a Sister who offered at this critical junction in his life, support for Damien and his work, was Mother Marianne Kopp, (a.k.a. Sr. Marianne Kop) Superior of the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, New York, who had long served the Honolulu leper hospital on the Island of Oahu. Damien had requested Mother Marianne to send Sisters to care for the girls' orphanage at Molokai. Damien promised her that not one of her Sisters would ever be afflicted with leprosy. The Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse are still on Molokai. To this day, not one of them has ever contracted leprosy.
While Father Damien lived in abject poverty and was denied many of the necessities and comforts of life, the Rev. Dr. Charles McEwen Hyde in Honolulu lived a life of opulence and privilege. His dwelling was an immense palatial mansion whose ostentation caused the taxi driver who delivered Robert Louis Stevenson to Reverend Hyde's residence (where Stevenson was housed as a pampered guest) to make disparaging remarks about such wealth among the clergy. The New York Times later reported on the wealthy clergy in Hawaii in general and the Reverend C. M. Hyde in particular: "In the course of their evangelical work these missionaries, or too many of them, have become rich until their houses have become a cause of mocking on the streets of Honolulu. Mr. Stevenson says when he went to call on Hyde... even the driver of his cab commented on the size, the taste and the comfort of the Hyde Home." [New York Times, Wednesday, January 21, 1894, page 24] Many reports such as those foreshadowed the remarks of Bishop Desmond Tutu, who remarked years later, "When the missionaries first came... they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.'" Damien was a member of the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts, who had pioneered Catholicism in the islands. Catholic missionaries were relative late-comers to Hawaii, first arriving in 1827 and none of them amassed the wealth of their Protestant counterparts, mostly because of some of the Catholic clergy's vows of poverty. The five wealthiest and most powerful families ("The Big Five") in the early Territory of Hawaii, were Protestant missionary families whose wealth exists to this day. Reverend Hyde, was a political activist who wanted Hawaii to be annexed by the United States and had spread malicious gossip against Father Damien, saying that it was Protestants and the government health ministries who were responsible for the immense progress on Molokai and not the Catholics or Father Damien. Hyde's statements, of course, were patently false and completely unfounded in fact as the world was soon to discover, thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson, a friend of Hyde's and a fellow Presbyterian. In his writings, Stevenson acknowledged that there were bad examples among the clergy of all religious sects, including his own. Rev. Hyde never visited Molokai, much less Kaluauapa and its shunned leper colonies.
Religious rivalries were not strangers to Hawaii.
Click Image to Enlarge
In light of Rev. Hyde's scurrilous accusations and maligning libels against Father Damien, Robert Louis Stevenson vowed to visit the Kalaupapa leper colony to see for himself and to speak to the condemned lepers there regarding Father Damien's works in the leper colonies on Molokai. While his personal manner was considered course by Victorian standards, Damien's sacrifices were legion and his temperament had remained jolly throughout his tenure at Kalaupapa. Robert Louis Stevenson's visit to Molokai lasted eight days, but Stevenson's awakening began even before he landed there. He travelled in a small boat with two religious sisters, "bidding farewell (in humble imitation of Damien) to the lights and joys of life." One of the nuns "wept silently and I could not withhold myself from joining her ... [A]s the boat drew nearer [we] beheld the stairs crowded with abominable deformations of our common manhood ... a population as only now and then surrounds us in the horror of a nightmare ... the butt-ends of human beings lying there almost unrecognisable but still breathing, still thinking, still remembering ... a pitiful place to visit, a hell to dwell in."
But dwell in it he did. Stevenson became very friendly with the nuns and - to their despair - mixed freely with the displaced lepers and played with the children. Because of his tuberculosis, his sorry state of health made him doubly a candidate for infection, and Sister Marianne admonished him.
Robert Louis Stevenson was a deeply spiritual man, honest to the point of bluntness, and above all a truth-seeker. What he saw at Molokai simply overwhelmed him. As a younger man he had often joked about the clergy of his own denomination in Glasgow saying that if they had appeared more as joyful bearers of the Word, and less like undertakers, he may have taken more notice.
But Father Damien's "hands on" Christianity, together with his robust faith and his acceptance of the news of his own leprosy "with a merry heart" was something different. Even though Stevenson was well aware of Damien's human failings - "he was no plastic saint." Yet the evidence of his goodness was undeniable and Stevenson, famous man of letters, graduate in both Law and Engineering, declared that the eight days on Father Damien's Molokai changed his life forever.
Before leaving the island, Stevenson presented the children's home with many gifts - a piano among them...
Robert Louis Stevenson was greatly affected by Damien's cheerful and agreeable disposition and Stevenson believed that Damien was a saint and the great Scottish writer predicted that the Catholic Church would one day canonize Damien to sainthood, which finally came to pass on Sunday, 11 October 2009 at the Vatican in Rome. Stevenson made plain in his letter to Dr. Hyde that Hyde's own contribution in his later published letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage would be used as "evidence against" the slander of Damien, and its unfounded accusations needed to be balanced by the truth - hence Stevenson's famous "Open Letter" to Rev. Hyde and the world.
In his published and oft quoted open letter to Rev. Hyde, Stevenson stated, "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 [succors] 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." Stevenson accurately predicted to Rev. Hyde that "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...." which maliciously disparaged Father Damien. Stevenson also precisely delineated the point that separated Damien from Hyde: "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."
The reaction was predictable and powerful. Distraught and agitated Rev. Hyde could do no better than to try to dismiss Robert Louis Stevenson as "a Bohemian crank, a negligible person whose opinion is of no value to anyone." Interestingly enough, four years prior, the Reverend Dr. Hyde had written words of commendation in the newspaper Hawaiian Gazette, describing Damien as "...that noble-hearted Catholic priest who went to Molokai in 1873 to care for the spiritual welfare of those of his faith, and whose work has been so successful." Why Hyde turned from praise to slander in four years is unknown, but "such shuddering hypocrisy" was too much for fellow Presbyterian Robert Louis Stevenson. It's Ironic coincidence that the antagonist's, name "Hyde" in Stevenson's famous work, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about a man with two personalities, one good and one bad (Hyde). In real life, Reverend C. M. Hyde had been particularly stung by Stevenson's closing words to him: "The man who did what Damien did is my Father... and the Father of all who love goodness: and He was your Father too, if God had given you the grace to see it."
Father Damien was buried next to the church he built for his loyal parishioners. Above Father Damien's grave on Molokai his friends set a black marble cross with the inscription, "Damien de Veuster, Died a Martyr of Charity." Among his other miracles, St. Damien is also credited with curing a French nun who was dying of an intestinal disease and another Oahu resident, Audrey Toguchi, dying of lung cancer. Neither Mrs. Toguchi or her physician, Dr. Walter Y.M. Chang, could offer a medical explanation for her miraculous recovery.
In 1936, the Belgian government asked for the return of Father Damien, Jozef de Veuster's body and St. Damien is now buried in Leuven, (Louvain) just east of Bruxelles (Brussels), Belgium, a city close to the village which was Damien's birthplace. Damien's body is now in Belgium and perhaps his soul is in Heaven, but, probably his spirit is still in Hawaii among the spirits he loved and the spirits who loved him.
Father Damien's Grave
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High Definition Wallpaper
On his death, April 15, 1889, the humble Father Damien, "Apostle to the Lepers", was laid to rest by and among his leper friends on Molokai. Damien gave his life so that the abandoned, the downtrodden and the suffering might find some comfort, tranquility and happiness in their final days and leave their earthly dwellings content that their lives had not been in vain. The world became a better place because Father Damien, citizen of the world, was here. Adorning Damien's grave, the faithful members of his congregation placed a black marble cross inscribed, "Damien de Veuster, Died a Martyr of Charity." To see a photo of Damien's mourners, click here. For a high resolution wallpaper size photograph of Father Damien's Grave, click here. Forty-six years after Father Damien's funeral his remains were transferred to his native Belgium. President Franklin D. Roosevelt provided a United States Navy ship, U.S.S. Mercator, to transport the casket, which was welcomed at Antwerp by the Cardinal Archbishop as well as Belgian King Leopold III and more than 100,000 people.
As for the world-renowned writer from Scotland, author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, "The Bottle Imp" a short story set in Hawaii, et. al., Robert Louis Stevenson - he passed away just a few years later in 1894 in Samoa. And when Stevenson died at age 44, his native Samoan friends buried their beloved "Great Story Teller" on the peak of Mt. Vaea, "under a wide and starry sky", as he had requested. Two great men of history, whose paths had crossed, died young in the islands of the Pacific as did the great British explorer Captain James Cook who was killed and is buried on the Island of Hawaii. Perhaps the three of them enjoy swapping legends in Heaven with Mark Twain who called the Kingdom of Hawaii "the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean". Mark Twain, circa 1889, also said of Hawaii, which was a foreign country at that time, "No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me, but that one; no other land could so longingly and beseechingly haunt my sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides."
Young Father Damien
Father Damien, born Jozef ("Jef") de Veuster
Known as Joseph de Veuster
Click the Image to Enlarge the Portrait
The above drawing is by the famous British watercolorist and artist, Edward Clifford, who had an intense interest in finding a cure for leprosy and after reading about the works of the priest in Hawaii, visited Father Damien on Molokai. This portrait was meant to portray "Jef" as he looked before arriving in Hawaii at the age of 20 and not yet browned by the tropical sun. A similar sketch is in the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Click here to view a portrait that Clifford also composed showing Father Damien as he looked months before his death in 1889 at the age of 49. Click here to view a painting of Father Damien at the age of 33 when he arrived in Kalauapapa combined with a small portrait of him at age 48 a year prior to his death. For a portrait painted of Father Damien at 48, click Here. To see another smaller portrait which was painted of Father Damien at the age of 48, click here. Interestingly, Jozef "Jef" de Veuster was to have studied commerce and inherited his father's business, but, Damien chose another path instead.
The area where "Damien the leper" did his work is now Kalaupapa National Historical Park, founded in 1980, and is part of the National Park System. The park is within the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement, listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a national historic landmark. A section of the park is included within the North Shore Cliffs National Natural Landmark. The Molokai Lighthouse is listed separately in the National Register.
The Statue of Father Damien at the Hawaii State Capitol Building
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For a Large, High Definition Photo, click here.
The modernistic, stylized bronze statue of Father Damien sculpted by Marisol Escobar and cast in Italy can also be viewed at the Hall of Columns in Washington, D.C. and is part of the National Statuary Hall Collection which has 100 statues, two apiece from each of the 50 United States. (The other Hawaii statue is of King Kamehameha I.)
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Molokai IV - Molokai Still Evolves
On the western side of the island is the Molokai Ranch which was built about 1850 when German Immigrant Rudolf Meyer married a high chieftess named Dorcas Kalama Waha. The land, owned by King Kamehameha had been formed in the Great Mahele of 1848 and was managed by Meyer long after the death of the king. When Meyer became manager of the property, the couple and their 11 children wrought a magnificent ranch that is little unchanged from their original creation. In 1875 Charles Bishop bought half the ranch -- Bernice, his wife, a Kamehameha descendant, had inherited the other half, but Meyer stayed on as manager. In 1898 when Meyer died, the ranch was sold for $251,000 to the Honolulu business consortium that later formed the American Sugar Company. In 1908 it was sold again to Charles Cooke and the ranch remains in the Cooke family to the present time. In 1923 the Libby Corporation leased the Molokai Ranch land at Kaluakoi and began pineapple production. Then in 1927, the Del Monte Corporation leased the portion of the ranch at Kualapuu. The 2 companies imported many laborers from Japan and the Philippines and the population expanded rapidly. The old days of the predominantly Hawaiian heritage were gone forever. In 1972 Libby sold out to Dole and Dole closed the operation in 1975 after losing millions of dollars. Del Monte ceased operation in 1986 and not only were the old ways of Hawaii gone, but pineapple had abandoned Molokai as well - and a whopping 80 to 90% of the population went on welfare for years to come. The prognosis is that, like so much of the rest of Hawaii, tourism will become king and remove Molokai ever farther from her roots and the old ways will recede farther into history.
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Molokai V - Molokai Nui a Hina
The chant, "Molokai nui a Hina..." harkens back to the mythology of the fabled island... Molokai was the offspring of the goddess Hina the "Mother Earth goddess" and the god Wakea, male progenitor of all the islands. Hina's cave, just east of Kaluaaha on the southeastern coast of Molokai is and has been revered as a sacred place for centuries. From its earliest days, Molokai has been venerated and feared as a center of mysticism and sorcery.
Early seafaring travelers from the Marquesas Islands arrived on the far eastern tip of Molokai, and founded Halawa, one of the oldest settlements in Hawaii which dates from about 600 CE. In 1778 Captain James Cook sailed past Molokai and declared that it looked bleak and uninhabited, so he decided not to drop anchor there. But, eventually some of the offspring of the goats that Captain Cook left on the Island of Niihau made their way to Molokai and thrive to this day. In 1786 Captain George Dixon came ashore, but recorded little in his ship's log and Molokai remained unnoticed. In 1790 King Kamehameha the Great landed to woo the chieftess, Keopuolani and seek her hand in marriage. He returned in 1795, but his time with his phalanx of warrior canoes who were en route to conquer Oahu. Landing at the bay a few miles east of Kaunakakai, his soldiers lined the beach for four miles at Pakuhiwa Battleground. A fierce battle ensued and the warriors of Molokai were killed by thousands and their bodies thrown into the surf. It is said that the frenzy of the sharks feeding on the slaughtered warriors made the waters appear to boil. The incantations of the kahuna were no match for Kamehameha and the war god, Ku, god "of the maggot dripping mouth". A subdued populace of Molokai slipped again into the background and resumed their peaceful ways of farming and fishing until the first missionaries arrived in 1832 and recorded the population at just above 6000. Again, with the arrival of the missionaries, the people would once again change and the old ways would be pushed farther away from the Hawaiian people than ever before.
To see the Geography of Molokai click here.
Maps of Hawaii
A map of the state of Hawaii and individual pop-up maps of each Hawaiian island as well as a tidbit of miscellany regarding the individual islands.
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With the exception of the former leper colony, Kalaupapa, which is a separate county, Kalawao County, Molokai is part of Maui County. Click on the link above to explore the Maui Webpage.
Click on the Bar for Molokai Weather
Current conditions, radar, marine and astronomy forecast for Molokai
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The Hawaiiana Page
For All-Island Information
Bighorn Corsican Mouflon Sheep
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Click the links below to view Hawaii Flowers and Animals
To see photographs of a sampling of the Flowers and Animals on land and in the waters of Hawaii, click Here.
Hawaiian Language Dictionaries
A great deal of Hawaiian music and oral history chants are sung in the native lyric and melodic Hawaiian Language. To use dictionaries of the Hawaiian language and language translators for 150 other languages, including other Polynesian tongues, click here. There is also a dictionary of computer terminology as well as E-mail, chat room and instant messenger language translators. And you can find your Hawaiian Name. To translate given names into Hawaiian names, click here.
"Mako" is the Hawaiian word for "shark". Hawaiians also use the word "mano" for various kinds of sharks, such as Mano kihikihi for hammerhead sharks. One species of shark common in Hawaiian waters as well as being found worldwide is called the "Mako Shark". You are invited to visit the Sharks webpage to read general information and see many photographs regarding the forty plus species of sharks in Hawaiian waters. The sharks in Hawaiian waters pose little threat to human beings. The sharks that have been responsible for the most hazards in Hawaii have been the galapagos sharks, scalloped hammerhead sharks, gray reef sharks and tiger sharks. While great white sharks can be dangerous, they do not frequent Hawaiian waters in great numbers because of their feeding habits. For more info about which shark species are the most aggressive and the most dangerous, more photographs, fascinating facts, shark research, safety tips, suggested reading and links to more shark websites, click, here.
• Kilauea Volcano Page
Click above to see dozens of maps, photos and videos of Kilauea Volcano lava fountains, lavafalls, lavastreams, calderas and molten lava creating clouds of steam as it enters the ocean. Also connect to maps of Kilauea Volcano underground activity and Loihi Seamount an active underwater volcano as well as obtain information concerning Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, other volcanoes of Hawaii, the United States and the world.
Islands Page
Information about each of the individual Hawaiian Islands. Every island is unique and has its own distinct history and flavor. The different islands possess special geographical and cultural features which distinguish them from the other islands of Hawaii and Polynesia. The eight major Hawaiian Islands, also known as the Windward Islands of Hawaii, are Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Maui, Kahoolawe and the Big Island of Hawaii. The 8 major Hawaiian Islands are also known as the Southeastern Hawaiian Islands. On the Islands Page you may link to read specific information and view photos regarding each separate island.
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4/4/2001
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