Today, besides being the Second Sunday of Easter, is the great feast of Blessed Father Damien. Blessed Father Damien de Veuster, SSCC, born Joseph, nicknamed Jef, was and is a popular and polarizing figure. Mia Farrow's father John Farrow, wrote a book about him and Robin Williams starred in a recent documentary about him entitled "An Uncommon Kindness." And what he did . . . freely . . . for the outcast lepers of Hawaii, banished as they were to the horrible and lawless island of Molokai was, indeed, uncommon. At first Father Damien only had to stay on a 3-month rotation with 3 other priests, but the Board of Health was unfriendly to Catholics and they forbid him from traveling to and from the island. They thought they'd seen the last of him. They thought wrong.
"Le bon gros Damien" as he was called in the Sacred Hearts novitiate was a hardy, straightforward and determined young man. Thought too dumb to be a priest, Damien worked very hard to learn French, then Latin, Greek and philosophy. It had been intended that he become a grain trader like his father, but he knew he had a vocation. Were it not for his older brother Pamphile who was already a brother in the same order, he might have given up or washed out. And were it not for the sudden occurrence of typhus in the same brother (he later recovered), he might not have gotten to go to Hawaii at all. He begged to take his place, barely got permission and hurriedly said goodbye to family and friends. He served his 2 district parishes in Hawaii well, visiting all his people by canoe and horseback. He had a hard time with the Hawaiian language, but he had an innate understanding of the Hawaiian heart. He knew their love of pomp and ceremony and so he was determined to have them have lots of beautiful churches and chapels, even if he had to build them himself. The construction skills he developed stood him in good stead when he accepted the leper assignment and even bowed to the Board of Health's challenge that made him a virtual prisoner there.
He engaged the people, meeting their physical needs first, then when he'd won them over, enlisted them in building churches and schools; eradicating prostitution (which was rife there); trying new treatments; starting bands, choirs and confraternities. Damien himself put his shoulder to the plow, so to speak, and built many of the buildings himself, said Mass daily, changed their dressings and even built their coffins, besides saying Mass or prayers over them at death. He had little help. Ira B. Dutton, known as "Brother Joseph," was a layman and civil war veteran who came and worked tirelessly there in reparation for his sins. A male nurse came out too, which was good, since Damien needed his help after he himself contracted the dreaded disease after 16 years working among the lepers. He discovered it accidentally when he plunged his foot into boiling water (which hadn't cooled off yet) and felt no pain. It was the onset of the disease. The next day at Mass he addressed the congregation in these words: "We lepers . . . "
Today leprosy, or Hansen's disease as it is more properly called, is entirely treatable with antibiotics and sulfone drugs. It is no longer the long and painful death sentence it once was. Father Damien brought hope and the sacraments to his people and through his high-profile activism helped lepers everywhere. He was misunderstood by some, even of his own order, which hurt him more than the leprosy he suffered. But he never stopped saying "Yes" to God.
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