Creating Access and Inclusion in Worship

BLESSED DAMIEN DE VEUSTER (1840 -? 1889)

Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, in 1840. He entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary when he was eighteen years old, taking the name of Damian, a fourthcentury physician and martyr. Dedicated to bringing the compassionate love of Jesus and Mary to the world, the missionary order sent priests to then remote areas of the world. Damien?s brother Pamphile, also a member of the order, contracted typhoid and was unable to go to the Hawaiian Islands as a missionary. Damien asked to take his place. Damien was ordained a priest in May 1864, two months after arriving in Honolulu, Hawaii, and began a ten year ministry on the ?Big Island?.

During an epidemic of Hansen?s disease in 1863, the Hawaiian government quarantined people suspected of having the then incurable disease to a settlement on the island of Molokai. Several of Father Damien?s parishioners were forcibly sent to the island by the Department of Health. In solidarity with his exiled parishioners, Father Damien volunteered for three months each year to minister to the people banished to Molokai. After seeing the poor living conditions, lack of medical care and suffering of the people exiled on Molokai, Damien asked his bishop to allow him to remain permanently on the island to care for the physical, medical and spiritual needs of the residents. He served on the island of Molokai from 1873 to 1889.

Damien became an advocate for the citizens of Molokai. He obtained government funding for the construction of homes, an addition to the inadequate hospital, an orphanage, a school, roads, a pipeline for fresh water and a wharf during the sixteen years he ministered to his people. He built a church and a parish. He transformed a desolate, isolated and inhuman place into a community of hope. Damien contracted Hansen’s disease and died of its complications in 1889 at the age of 49.

Source: The Life of Damien, Diocese of Honolulu website, www.fatherdamien.com