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Friday, May 10, 2013

CATHOLIC NEWS WORLD FRI. MAY 10, 2013 - SHARE BREAKING NEWS


 2013












POPE FRANCIS "JOY IS A GIFT FROM GOD" AND MEETING WITH TAWADROS II, COPTIC ORTHODOX

WATCH THE LIFE OF ST. DAMIEN MOLOKAI PART 1 - FREE MOVIE

WOMAN RESCUED ALIVE AFTER 2 WEEKS IN COLLAPSED BUILDING IN BANGLADESH

RIP FR. GORDON DORRICOTT MBE - PRIEST AND PRISON CHAPLAIN

GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP AMONG CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN AUSTRALIA

TODAY'S MASS ONLINE : FRI. MAY 10, 2013

TODAY'S SAINT : MAY 10 : ST. DAMIEN OF MOLOKAI

Vatican Radio REPORT - SHARE - 
  Christian joy is a pilgrim joy that we cannot keep ‘bottled up’ for ourselves, or we risk becoming a ‘melancholy’ and ‘nostalgic’ community. Moreover, Christian joy is far from simple fun. It is something deeper than fleeting happiness, because it is rooted in our certainty that Jesus Christ is with God and with us.

This is the lesson that Pope Francis drew from the Acts of the Apostles at Friday morning Mass as he described the disciples joy in the days between our Lord’s Ascension and Pentecost and what we can learn from them. Mass in the Santa Marta residence chapel was concelebrated by the Archbishop of Mérida, Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo, and the abbot primate of the Benedictine monks Notker Wolf, and was attended by Vatican Radio staff accompanied by the Director General, Father Federico Lombardi. 

 "A Christian is a man and a woman of joy. Jesus teaches us this, the Church teaches us this, in a special way in this [liturgical]time. What is this joy? Is it having fun? No: it is not the same. Fun is good, eh? Having fun is good. But joy is more, it is something else. It is something that does not come from short term economic reasons, from momentary reasons : it is something deeper. It is a gift. Fun, if we want to have fun all the time, in the end becomes shallow, superficial, and also leads us to that state where we lack Christian wisdom, it makes us a little bit stupid, naive, no?, Everything is fun ... no. Joy is another thing. Joy is a gift from God. It fills us from within. It is like an anointing of the Spirit. And this joy is the certainty that Jesus is with us and with the Father”.

A man of joy, the Pope continued, is a confident man. Sure that "Jesus is with us, that Jesus is with the Father." He asked: Can we ‘bottle up’ this joy in order to always have it with us?

"No, because if we keep this joy to ourselves it will make us sick in the end, our hearts will grow old and wrinkled and our faces will no longer transmit that great joy only nostalgia, melancholy which is not healthy. Sometimes these melancholy Christians faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having a beautiful life. Joy cannot be held at heel: it must be let go. Joy is a pilgrim virtue. It is a gift that walks, walks on the path of life, that walks with Jesus: preaching, proclaiming Jesus, proclaiming joy, lengthens and widens that path. It is a virtue of the Great, of those Great ones who rise above the little things in life, above human pettiness, of those who will not allow themselves to be dragged into those little things within the community, within the Church: they always look to the horizon".
Joy is a "pilgrim," Pope Francis reiterated. "The Christian sings with joy, and walks, and carries this joy." It is a virtue of the path, actually more than a virtue it is a gift:


"It is the gift that brings us to the virtue of magnanimity. The Christian is magnanimous, he or she cannot be timorous: the Christian is magnanimous. And magnanimity is the virtue of breath, the virtue of always going forward, but with a spirit full of the Holy Spirit. Joy is a grace that we ask of the Lord. These days in a special way, because the Church is invited, the Church invites us to ask for the joy and also desire: that which propels the Christian's life forward is desire. The greater your desire, the greater your joy will be. The Christian is a man, is a woman of desire: always desire more on the path of life. We ask the Lord for this grace, this gift of the Spirit: Christian joy. Far from sorrow, far from simple fun ... it is something else. It is a grace we must seek".

Pope Francis concluded that today the presence in Rome of Tawadros II, Patriarch of Alexandria is a very good reason to be joyful: "Because he is a brother who comes to visit the Church of Rome to speak," and to walk “part of the path together”.
SHARED FROM RADIO VATICANA
HISTORIC MEETING BETWEEN POPE FRANCIS AND POPE TAWADROS II, HEAD OF COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH OF EGYPT
Vatican City, 10 May 2013 (VIS) - The visit of Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, “strengthens the bonds of friendship and brotherhood that already exist between the See of Peter and the See of Mark, heir to an inestimable heritage of martyrs, theologians, holy monks, and faithful disciples of Christ, who have borne witness to the Gospel from generation to generation, often in situations of great adversity,” said Pope Francis on receiving the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt this morning. The pontiff remarked on the memorable meeting that took place, 40 years ago, between the predecessors of both, Pope Paul VI and Pope Shenouda III, which united them “in an embrace of peace and fraternity, after centuries of mutual distance.”
The Joint Declaration that was signed then by those two Popes represented “a milestone on the ecumenical journey” and helped institute a joint commission of theological dialogue between the two Churches, which “has yielded good results and has prepared the ground for a broader dialogue between the Catholic Church and the entire family of Oriental Orthodox Churches, a dialogue that continues to bear fruit to this day. In that solemn Declaration,” Francis emphasized, “our Churches acknowledged that, in line with the apostolic traditions, they profess “one faith in the One Triune God” and 'the divinity of the Only-begotten Son of God ... perfect God with respect to his divinity, perfect man with respect to his humanity'. They acknowledged that divine life is given to us and nourished through the seven sacraments and they recognized a mutual bond in their common devotion to the Mother of God.”
The Bishop of Rome expressed his joy at being able to recognize one another as “united by one Baptism, of which our common prayer is a special expression that looks forward to the day when, in fulfilment of the Lord’s desire, we will be able to drink together from the one cup.” Aware that the path to be traversed is still long, the Holy Father noted some of its milestones, such as Pope Shenouda's meeting in Cairo with Blessed John Paul II in February of 2000. John Paul II, who was on pilgrimage to the places where our faith originated, expressed his conviction that “—with the guidance of the Holy Spirit—our persevering prayer, our dialogue and the will to build communion day by day in mutual love will allow us to take important further steps towards full unity.”
The Pope also thanked the Patriarch for his care toward the Coptic Catholic Church that has been expressed, among other things, in the establishment of a “National Council of Christian Churches”. This undertaking “represents an important sign of the will of all believers in Christ to develop relations in daily life that are increasingly fraternal and to put themselves at the service of the whole of Egyptian society, of which they form an integral part. Let me assure Your Holiness,” Pope Francis added, “that your efforts to build communion among believers in Christ, and your lively interest in the future of your country and the role of the Christian communities within Egyptian society find a deep echo in the heart of the Successor of Peter and of the entire Catholic community.”
“'If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together'. This is a law of Christian life, and in this sense we can say that there is also an ecumenism of suffering: just as the blood of the martyrs was a seed of strength and fertility for the Church, so too the sharing of daily sufferings can become an effective instrument of unity. This also applies, in a certain sense, to the broader context of society and relations between Christians and non-Christians: from shared suffering can blossom forth—with God’s help—forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.”
 
AUDIENCES
Vatican City, 10 May 2013 (VIS) – Today the Holy Father received in audience:
   - Cardinal Peter Erdo, archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary, president of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE), accompanied by four other members of that organization's presidency and secretariat:
   - Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa, Italy, vice president;
   - Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl of the Latins, Poland, vice president;
   - Msgr. Duarte Nuno Queiroz da Barros da Cunha, secretary general; and
   - Fr. Michel Remery, vice secretary general.

seven prelates from the Piemonte Region of the Italian Episcopal Conference on their "ad limina" visit:
   - Archbishop Enrico Masseroni of Vercelli,
   - Bishop Pier Giorgio Micchiardi of Acqui,
   - Bishop Francesco Guido Ravinale of Asti,
   - Bishop Gabriele Mana of Biella,
   - Bishop Franco Giulio Brambilla of Novara,
   - Bishop Alceste Catella of Casale Monferrato, and
   - Bishop Edoardo Aldo Cerrato, C.O., of Ivrea.
 
OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS
Vatican City, 10 May 2013 (VIS) – Today the Holy Father appointed:
   - Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum”, as his special envoy to Germany's National Eucharistic Congress, which will take place in Cologne on 9 June 2013.
   - Cardinal Franc Rode, C.M., prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, as his special envoy to the 1150th anniversary of the arrival of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Slovakian territory, which will take place in Nitra, Slovak Republic, on 5 July 2013.
   - Cardinal Josip Bozanic, archbishop of Zagreb, Croatia, as his special envoy to the 1150th anniversary of the arrival of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Czech territory, which will take place in Velehrad, Czech Republic, on 5 July 2013.

WATCH THE LIFE OF ST. DAMIEN MOLOKAI PART 1 - FREE MOVIE

Part 1 of the life story of St. Molokai shared from Youtube 

YOUNG PRIEST DIES 2 DAYS AFTER ORDINATION - RIP FR. CARROLL


carrolllg
DIOCESE OF TOLEDO RELEASE'
The Diocese of Toledo’s newest priest, Fr. Scott Carroll, died in the early hours of May 10.
Fr. Carroll had been battling cancer for some time. He looked forward to joining four 
classmates for ordination on June 22, 2013. However, it became clear this week that an 
earlier ordination might be prudent.
Bishop Leonard Blair ordained Fr. Scott Carroll on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. The ordination 
took place at his parents’ home with immediate family members present. It was a beautiful 
occasion. In addition to his ordination, Fr. Scott had been named Associate Pastor of St. 
Joseph Parish, Maumee, Ohio.
Fr. Scott is the son of Robert and the late Patricia Carroll, step-son of Connie, and brother of
Patrick and Tim. His home parish is St. Joseph in Maumee. 
Fr. Scott attended Holy Spirit Seminary until its closing and graduated from St. John’s Jesuit 
High School in Toledo. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Education and a Master’s in History 
from the University of Toledo, as well as a Master’s in Educational Administration from the 
University of Dayton and a Master’s in Divinity from St. Meinrad Seminary. 
Before entering the seminary, Fr. Scott taught middle school Social Studies in Swanton local 
schools. As a seminarian, he served his Pastoral Internship Year at Norwalk St. Paul, as well 
as summer ministries at St. Paul and at St. Joseph in Maumee.
Requiescat in pace.
Rev. Scott R. Carroll 

Born August 5, 1966
Ordained to the 
Order of Presbyter
May 8, 2013
Died May 10, 2013
SHARED FROM DIOCESE OF TOLEDO

WOMAN RESCUED ALIVE AFTER 2 WEEKS IN COLLAPSED BUILDING IN BANGLADESH

UCAN REPORT

Rescuers free female worker trapped for more than two weeks

Rescue workers continue their search of the remains of a garment factory complex that collapsed on April 26 (AFP photo/Munir Uz Zaman)
  • AFP, Dhaka
  • Bangladesh
  • A woman was pulled alive on Friday from the ruins of a garment factory complex in Bangladesh more than 16 days after it collapsed and killed over 1,000 people, live television footage showed.
The miraculous rescue came shortly after emergency officials announced that the woman called Reshmi had been located under the rubble of the nine-story Rana Plaza complex after crying out for help.
A report on Bangladesh's Somoy TV said that she had been found sheltering in the ruins of a basement mosque.
Rescuers cheered loudly as she was carried to an army ambulance, managing a faint smile at the crowds who had gathered.
The country's fire service chief said that the woman appeared to have had access to water during her marathon ordeal trapped underneath the wreckage of the building which had caved in on April 24.
One of the rescuers said that the woman had cried out for help as recovery teams sifted through the wreckage in the town of Savar on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka.
“As we were clearing rubble, we called out if anyone was alive,” the unnamed rescuer told the private Somoy TV channel. “Then we heard her saying 'please save me, please save me'.”
Another rescuer said that the woman had had access to food supplies for the first fortnight of her ordeal but had run out two days ago.
“She said she has not eaten for the last two days. She said she has eaten some dried food like biscuits,'' said the rescuer.  “She said she had found a safe place and found some air and light.''
News of the miracle survival came as recovery teams were preparing to wrap up their work at the site after discovering scores more corpses in the tangle of concrete overnight.
Brigadier General Siddiqul Alam, one of the leaders of the recovery operation, said the toll now stands at 1,041, making it one of the world's deadliest industrial disasters.
Alam said many of the bodies were little more than skeletons and the stench from under the rubble suggested that many more were still to be located.
“We have found a huge number of bodies in the stairwell and under the staircases. When the building started to collapse, workers thought they would be safe under the staircases,'' he said.
“Each time we moved a slab of concrete, we found a stack of bodies.''
More than 3,000 workers were on shift on the morning of April 24 when the building suddenly caved in.
SHARED FROM UCAN NEWS

RIP FR. GORDON DORRICOTT MBE - PRIEST AND PRISON CHAPLAIN

IND. CATH. NEWS REPORT

 
Fr Andrew Dorricott MBE has died - a long serving parish priest, prison chaplain | Father Gordon Andrew Alfonso Dorricott

The young Fr Andrew Dorricott
 Father Gordon Andrew Alfonso Dorricott was born on 16 March 1924 of Catholic parents in Shrewsbury, a town to which he retained a lifelong devotion, including support of Shrewsbury Town Football Club. His father Andrew, who was a convert to Catholicism, was killed in a road accident in 1968 aged 73, but his mother Ann lived until she was 103. Both parents were natives of Shrewsbury and the name ‘Dorricott’ is an old Shropshire word meaning ‘shelter for the deer’.
Young Gordon was educated by the Sisters of Mercy at St Winifred’s Convent, Shrewsbury, and at the Priory Grammar School, Shrewsbury. After leaving school he worked for the Inland Revenue (1941-1942) and as a telegram messenger for the National Fire Service (1942). At the age of 18 he was conscripted into the King's Shropshire Light Infantry (1942-1944) and thereafter served in the Intelligence Corps (1944-1947). He saw war service in India and Burma. While stationed at Madras, he used to serve Mass at the Presentation Convent alongside another young soldier by the name of Hugh Lindsay, who later became the Bishop of Hexham & Newcastle.
In 1947 he began studies for the priesthood at St Edmund’s College, Ware, as a student for the Oblates of St Charles. However, in 1949 he was accepted as a student for the Diocese of Brentwood and was sent to St John’s Seminary, Wonersh. He was the first diocesan priest ordained by Bishop Beck at Brentwood Cathedral on 30 May 1953, the Saturday after the Coronation. He served as an assistant priest at Upminster (1953-1955) and Chelmsford (1955), took temporary charge of Prittlewell (1955) and then went as an assistant to Colchester (1955-1958). In April 1958 he succeeded Canon Smith as parish priest of Rayleigh, where he was to serve for no less than 46 years. Here he completed the building of the Church of Our Lady of Ransom (1962-1964) and brought the Sisters of Mercy from Cloyne (Ireland) to open Our Lady of Ransom Primary School (1966). As parish priest he had 17 assistant priests in the parish. He was also a dedicated chaplain to the women’s prison at Bullwood Hall, Hockley, for 42 years (1962-2004), the former inmates of which he used to refer to as ‘my old girls’. In recognition of his service to the local community in Rayleigh, including his work as a prison chaplain, he was awarded the MBE in 2000. Two years later he was granted the Freedom of the City of London.
The Catenian Association, the Knights of St Columba and the Catholic Nurses’ Guild were among the many Catholic organisations he supported. He served as Dean of Basildon, a Diocesan Consultor, a Trustee of the Diocese, and was for many years a member of the Finance Board. He retired as parish priest of Rayleigh in 2004 but continued to reside in the town. In 2012, he received a Ministry of Justice Award with the citation “Awarded to Fr Andrew Dorricott for outstanding performance and commitment at HMP Bullwood Hall”. In retirement, Fr Andrew continued to visit Bullwood Hall to celebrate Mass and give pastoral care. He also assisted Fr Martin Joyce, Rayleigh’s parish priest, by saying Mass in the parish when needed. More recently, Fr Andrew had been in fragile health following a stroke. He died peacefully in Southend Hospital on 3 May 2013, less than one month before his Diamond Jubilee of Ordination.
His Requiem Mass will take place at 11am on 17 May at Our Lady of Ransom in Rayleigh. He will be buried in his beloved Shrewsbury.
Fr Dorricott was interviewed back in 2003 when he celebrated 50 years as a priest. You can read the transcript below:
Around 400 people attended Mass on the anniversary itself, Friday 30 May 2003, somewhat to Fr Dorricott’s surprise. “I didn’t expect so many,” he said modestly. During the service he told the congregation: “I have never lost the sense of wonder that comes to me at the consecration, that I could be used to bring Christ to others.”
Fr Dorricott, who was awarded an MBE for services to the community in the Millennium honours list, was showered with gifts on his anniversary. One was particularly interesting. A woman serving life in Hockley prison Bullwood Hall, where he has been chaplain since 1962, had painted him a picture of the crucifixion, using colours that matched decoration in the parish church.
A weekend of celebration of Fr Dorricott’s anniversary was rounded off with a special Mass in the church on 3 June, attended by many of Fr Dorricott’s brother priests and the Bishop of Brentwood, Thomas McMahon, who gave the homily. A reception followed in the church hall.
Fr Dorricott began his ministry as a curate at Upminster 50 years ago, where he recalls getting on his bicycle to look after Harold Wood Hospital and setting up a branch of the Catholic Nurses Guild. He then served as assistant priest at Immaculate Conception in Chelmsford before stepping into the breach in Prittlewell while the parish priest was in hospital.
A stint as assistant at St James the Less in Colchester followed. At that time Brightlingsea, nine miles away, was in the parish and he had to get there fairly frequently. He abandoned the bike and bought an old car. “It was a 1934 Rayleigh Kestrel,” he recalled.
In April 1958 Fr Dorricott was appointed parish priest at Our Lady of Ransom in Rayleigh. During his tenure the church itself was completed, the presbytery and Pope John Paul II Hall built and St Pius X church in Hockley extended. He was the driving force behind the establishment of Our Lady of Ransom primary school, travelling to Ireland in 1961 to negotiate with the Sisters of Mercy in Cloynes. In 1966 the school opened, funded by the parish and the Order, and the nuns built a convent next door. “The nuns are the trustees of the school and provided many teachers in earlier years,” said Fr Dorricott. “They were most generous.”
Fr Dorricott has also been chaplain at Bullwood Hall, the women’s prison in Hockley, since 1962, a role that has given him much fulfilment. And his contribution there was marked by a surprise anniversary gift, which linked his prison work with his parish. He said: “One of the lifers – not a Catholic – painted me a beautiful picture of the crucifixion. She got one of the nuns to take a photo of the appliqué colours in the church and painted flowers in those hues in the picture.”
Referring to his parish, he said: “I couldn’t have wished for better people to serve – they have been wonderfully kind to me. Serving the parish and the prison has given me enormous satisfaction – I hope to be here for my jubilee.”
Editor's note: I interviewed Fr Dorricott when he was prison chaplain  at Bullwood Hall - such a kind and good priest with a lovely sense of humour. - Jo 
SHARED FROM IND. CATH. NEWS

GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP AMONG CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN AUSTRALIA

ARCHDIOCESE OF MELBOURNE RELEASE

Catholic schools golf championship

The best individual scores for the championship were carded by Christian Bennett of Parade College with -71 in Division 1 and Chris John of Emmanuel College with -73 in Division 2.

emm div 2 champions

Friday 10 May 2013dls div 1 champions

Words and pictures courtesy of ACC
THE annual Associated Catholic Colleges(ACC) Open Golf Championship was held recently at Northern Golf Club in Glenroy, with superb conditions greeting the golfers for an early tee off.

De La Salle College recorded their third win in Division 1 in four years, with a total score of 474 for their top 6 players.

Emmanuel College were back on the winners list in Division 2, with their first open championship win since 2007. They recorded 574 for their top 6 players.

TODAY'S MASS ONLINE : FRI. MAY 10, 2013

John 16: 20 - 23
20Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.
21When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.
22So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.
23In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name.

TODAY'S SAINT : MAY 10 : ST. DAMIEN OF MOLOKAI


St. Damien of Molokai
MISSIONARY PRIEST
Feast: May 10


Information:
Feast Day:May 10
Born:January 3, 1840, Tremelo, Belgium
Died:April 15, 1889 (aged 49),        Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaii
Beatified:June 4, 1995, Rome by Pope John Paul II
Canonized:
October 11, 2009, Rome by Pope Benedict XVI
Major Shrine:shrine Leuven, Belgium (bodily relics), Maui, Hawaii (relics of his hand)
Patron of:People with leprosy, people with HIV and AIDS, outcasts, the State of Hawaii


Joan's Rome Special Edition
Follow Joan Lewis, EWTN's Rome Bureau Chief, as she blogs her trip to Hawaii to learn about St. Damien of Molokai, the leper and missionary priest. Later, she attends his Canonization on October 11, 2009.


In Search of a Saint: Day One of My Trip to Hawaii

Hawaii: The Story of a Teacher and Her Friend Damien

Hawaii: The Search for a Saint on the Island of Moloka'i

Hawaii: In Search of a Saint: The Prison that was Kalaupapa

In Search of a Saint: Following Damien to Kalawao

Damien and the Church of St. Philomena - Molokai's Maria Sullivan Talks of Damien and Kalaupapa on Vatican Insider

Aloha to Moloka's and Our Search for a Saint

Honolulu and Father Damien

St. Damien of Molokai: "A Noble Figure, An Authentic Servant of God"

The Universal Church Rejoices in Five New Saints - Hawaiians Fete Their "Own" St. Damien
Introduction

Every age has its stories of heroic men and women whose faith challenges them to reach out in heroic love and service to alleviate the sufferings of their brothers and sisters.

This is the story of one such hero. He was born Joseph De Veuster, a Belgian farm boy. He is known now to all the world as Damien the Leper. His bronze figure graces the statuary hall in Washington, D.C.

Damien's compassion for the lepers led him to spend sixteen years in the "living graveyard that was Molokai," where he died at the age of forty-nine in service to people suffering from the terrible disease of leprosy.

Damien never lost sight of his life's purpose, despite the many difficulties and sufferings he bore. It was only his faith  that enabled him to endure the trials that his life's work caused him.

We hope that you enjoy this story and find it a source of strength and encouragement.

The Fateful Words...

He read the letter, over and over. "You may stay as long as your devotion dictates...." The words exploded against his mind and shook his heart. Again, and once again, he read them. They were the most welcome words he had ever received.

He stood and listened to the sounds about him. Soft, cool breezes gently swept across his island. The palm trees along the shore bowed before the refreshing winds and clapped their great fronds in joy. Bright morning sunlight played over the trees, turning the leaves, now silver, blue. The Pacific waves rolled tranquilly against the rocky shores. The green and white waters rose and fell; the ocean's motion never stopped, day or night. The restless power locked in the Pacific's waves mirrored the surging energies locked within his own heart.

He was a priest—a simple man. His parents were Belgian farmers. Nature had prepared his square, sturdy, and well-developed body to till the soil. God had summoned him to labor in a different field—to cultivate a more violent harvest. The words he now read hammered home this summons.

The letter, from his superiors, gave the priest, Father Damien De Veuster, permission to stay where he was and where he, in the springtime of 1873, longed with all his heart to be. On Molokai, one of the Hawaiian Islands. Father De Veuster, thirty-three, had already served nine years in the Hawaiian missions. He was a member of the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts, who had pioneered Catholicism in the islands.      These religious had faced and overcome enormous problems since their arrival in 1827. Now they faced a new and frightful challenge, a leprosy epidemic. To halt the spread of the dread disease, the Hawaiian government had isolated several hundred lepers at Kalawao, on the island of

Molokai. Catholic lepers there begged for a priest. Many missioners, despite danger of contagion, had offered to go. The Bishop, Louis Maigret, and Father Modeste, the religious superior of the Sacred Hearts Fathers, had selected Damien to begin the mission. Both were reluctant to put such a crushing burden pemanently on this young priest's square and sturdy shoulders. The Bishop and Father Modeste knew the bitter work that had to be done; they hesitated to demand that this one man do so much of it.

Thirteen years before, while a student for the priesthood in France, Damien had symbolically faced and accepted death. At the public profession of his final vows, as was the religious custom of the times, his superiors covered him with a funeral pall. He had truly believed then that only by accepting death would he discover life. Now, thirteen years later, he was putting his dedication to the test. He sought to serve the most pitiful of all men, the lepers of Molokai. By so doing, in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, "he shut to, with his own hands, the doors of his own sepulchre."

Men Discover Hawaii

The Hawaiian Islands, one of the most beautiful places in all of God's creation, were one of the last places on earth that men discovered. God was saving, it seems, his choicest gift for the last. Polynesian explorers, the first men to find the islands, settled there about eight centuries after Christ's birth. A thousand years later, during the American Revolution, British sailors, under Captain Cook, were the first Europeans to reach this paradise.

Europeans found about three hundred thousand people on the islands. The natives, cheerful, unspoled, easy-going unless provoked, were generous, delighted in sports and athletic contests. A highly organized native religion dominated every aspect of Hawaiian life.

Living was easy in the islands. The people readily obtained fish, fruit, vegetables, and meat. Hawaiians lived in little homes constructed of palm branches. Daily life was pleasant, cheerful, uncomplicated.

As contact with the outside world increased, the Hawaiians, with no immunity to European and Asiatic diseases, suffered      immensely. Smallpox, influenza, cholera, tuberculosis, venereal disease, struck savagely and pitilessly. Within a hundred years of the white man's arrival, the native population dropped from three hundred thousand to fifty thousand people. In the long litany of ills decimating the Hawaiian people, none was more vicious than leprosy. This hideous disease cut an evil swath through the defenseless natives of our planet's Last Eden.

Leprosy

One of man's oldest curses, leprosy for centuries defied cure or remedy. To prevent its spread, Moses had separated and isolated Jews afflicted by it from the community. Roman legions and, later, Crusaders brought the disease to Europe. Authorities, having no better remedy than Moses, 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. Although the disease ran its course through western Europe, by the turn of the nineteenth century the memory of it remained sunk in the white man's brain like the terror of a nightmare. Even today the word "leprosy" evokes in the minds and hearts of people who have never seen a leper, the strangest sensations of fear and repulsion.

The first authenticated case of leprosy appeared in Hawaii in 1840. Within thirty years the disease reached epidemic proportions among the defenseless Hawaiians. Authorities, helpless and ill-equipped, adopted the only policy they knew, the policy of segregation. In 1868, the Hawaiian government established a leper settlement on the island of Molokai, and officials were dispatched to round up the lepers. Ideally equipped by nature for its grim purposes, Molokai became an island of sorrow in the wild beauty of the Hawaiian chain. Its very name struck terror in the Hawaiian heart.

Hawaiians gave little thought to tommorow; and had no worries about robbers, since village families held all things in common. They ate, slept and worked on the family straw mat.

Karokina

Her name was Karokina. Mother of three children, she lived in a tiny fishing village on the island of Hawaii. Her life was simple, serene; her home, a lean-to built of palm branches. Affection, laughter and song characterized Karokina's home life. She loved to watch the sun cast down silver jewels of light upon the green ocean. The gods were close to Karo. Every so often, Pele, goddess of fire, whose footsteps the medicine men declared had formed their islands, hurled smoke and fire from a nearby volcano. Then Karo knew fear. The blue skies turned to black, the ocean hissed as hot lava and firestones poured into its bosom. The sun and moon hid their faces behind the great clouds of steam that rose from the heaving seas.

A lake of fire springs from the heart of a Hawaiian mountain. Centuries after volcanic explosions had formed the islands, their people were blessed by the fire of love in one man's heart.

Then the winds cleared the air, and Karo's fear passed. Karo loved her islands most in the spring, when the poinciana trees burst into masses of scarlet, orange and gold bossoms, and pink flowers popped out from the green canopies of the monkey pod trees. It was during a springtime of great joy and beauty that white men from Honolulu came to Karo's village. They were searching for natives who had that strange disease white men called leprosy.

Karo had the illness. She knew a few years ago, when her hand brushed against a smoldering log. Karo felt no pain. The terrible illness had begun its frightful work. Her face's gentle features gradually withered. Her eyes narrowed, and her ears enlarged. The disease ate her energy, and she knew fever and weakness. Karo's husband and children sorrowed at her plight and did all they could to comfort her. They, of course, kept her at home. Her husband heard that the government was rounding up lepers and sending them to Molokai. "How cruel," he complained to his neighbors, "to separate mother or father or children from home when they need the family most. If the white man wishes to treat his sick differently than Hawaiians do, why doesn't he go away and leave us alone? He forced his cruel illness on us and now he is forcing his brutal cures."

There were other lepers in Karo's village. Some heard the white man coming and hid in the great volcano caves. Others found hiding places and holes in the jungle floor. But for Karo it was too late. The hunters took her at gunpoint to a government schooner. Her husband tried to stop them, but he was helpless. Karo's children wailed and wept piteous tears of despair. White men spoke of their god as a god of mercy. Yet they showed no mercy.

Karo's captors took her first to Honolulu, where they herded      her together with lepers from other islands. Some where more disfigured and ill than she was. Many could not walk; others could barely crawl. But the police forced them all on board the ship that was to take them to Molokai in this February of 1873. The ship's crew looked on the unfortunates with horror.

After several hours on the open sea, the schooner, full of weeping, crying and terrorized sick, arrived off the Molokai colony's shore. There was no harbor, no dock. The captain and crew, afraid to bring the vessel too close to the rocky beach, drove and hurled the lepers into the surf. Some drowned. Others miraculously survived. On torn and bleeding feet they stumbled up on the harsh volcanic rock, numb and cold.

There was no one to greet them. No one to warm them. Many survived the pounding surf only to die from exhaustion on the inhospitable beach. Karo dragged herself to shore. Eventually she found a little cave to shelter her shivering body. Wild fruit helped nourish her. There was little food. She soon joined another group of lepers. They told her to forget home. All of them were condemned. They might as well reach for whatever wild joys they could possess before merciful death claimed them.

"In this place," a man advised Karo, "there is no law." Sexual immorality, brawling, drunkenness, robberies, and orgiastic dancing, fueled by liquor made from tree roots, characterized the lives of lepers. Nobody cared. When lepers died, their poor bodies were thrown into graves so shallow that pigs and dogs grew fat feasting on their flesh.

Karo despaired and died.

The Outside World

Between 1866 and 1873, seven hundred and ninety-seven lepers arrived at Molokai. Almost half died. Public indignation mounted. The Board of Health, which natives wryly dubbed the "Board of Death," sought to improve conditions. The government granted an increase in leper food and clothing rations, and appointed a superintendent to restore law and order to the colony. The press kept up a drum-fire of complaints about the ill-treatment and disorder of Molokai. In April, 1873, Walter Gibson, a colorful and clever politician, wrote in Nuhou, a Hawaiian newspaper; "If a noble Christian priest, preacher or Sister should be inspired to go and sacrifice a life to console these poor wretches, that would be a royal soul to shine forever on a throne reared by human love."

Despite the fulsome prose, Gibson was trumpeting a call, a challenge. There were indeed several men in the islands, only too willing to respond. They were good shepherds, searching for a flock for which they could lay down their lives. They were priests and Brothers of the Sacred Hearts. One of them was Father Damien De Veuster. Call it presentiment, prophecy, or anything you wish, but Damien had known for some time that he would eventually go to Molokai. In April, 1873, he wrote 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." And join them he did. In early May, 1873, Father Damien's superiors approved his request to serve at the leper settlement.

The New Pastor

Bishop Maigret accompanied Damien to Molokai. The Bishop proudly presented the new pastor to the Catholic lepers. The joy of their welcome and Damien's excitement upon finally arriving at Molokai, dimmed the fact that he carried with him little more than his Breviary. Sacred Hearts religious previously had built a tiny chapel on Molokai, and had dedicated it to St. Philomena. For his first rectory, Damien used the shelter of a pandanus tree, beside the little church. The pandanus offered hospitality to all passing creatures, centipedes, scorpions, ants, roaches and, finally, fleas. Cats, dogs and sheep found shelter under the tree's kind branches. Damien settled in comfortably. A large rock on the side of the tree served as his dinner table. During these first weeks the new missionary took normal precautions to avoid contagion.

With the lepers' help, Damien added the rear wing to Molokai's chapel. He also built the rectory (left). The priest was a skillful carpenter. No construction project daunted him.

But if Damien protected his body, there was nothing he could do to protect his eyes or ears or sense of smell from the shock of contact with the leper. Here at Kalawao, the priest had opened a door to hell. Victims of the disease were all about him, their bodies in ruins, their faces ravaged and smashed by the coracious bacillus of leprosy. The constant coughing of the sick was the colony's most familiar sound. Gathering up his enormous resources of courage, Damien began to approach the lepers one by one. Their breath was fetid; their bodies, already in a state of corruption, exuded a most foul odor. One of his first visits was to a young girl. He had found that worms had eaten her whole side.

"Many a time," he wrote as he recalled these first days, "in fulfilling my priestly duties at the lepers' homes, I have been obliged, not only to close my nostrils, but to remain outside to breathe fresh air. To counteract the bad smell, I got myself accustomed to the use of tobacco. The smell of the pipe preserved me somewhat from carrying in my clothes the obnoxious odor of our lepers."

Molokai was a colony of shame, peopled by lost souls and smashed bodies. Medical care was minimal. Even if decent care were provided, Hawaiians distrusted the white man's medicine, preferring their own witch doctors, or kahuna. White doctors sporadically appeared at government expense.      These physicians lived in terror of contagion. One doctor examined lepers' wounds by lifting their bandages with his cane. Another left medicine on a table where lepers could collect it without touching him.

Life was grotesque on Molokai. Ambrose Hutchinson, a veteran of half a century in the colony, describes an incident in the settlement's early days. "A man, his face partly covered below the eyes, with a white rag or handkerchief tied behind his head, came out from the house that stood near the road. He was pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with a bundle, which, at first, I mistook for soiled rags. He wheeled it across the yard to a small windowless shack.... The man then half turned over the wheelbarrow and shook it. The bundle (instead of rags it was a human being) rolled out on the floor with an agonizing groan. The fellow turned the wheelbarrow around and wheeled it away, leaving the sick man lying there helpless. After a while the dying man raised and pushed himself in the doorway; with his body and his legs stretched out, he lay there face down."

Molokai was a chamber of horrors. But the Hawaiian government (which at this time was independent of the United States and headed by native royalty) had not planned it that way.

Plans Gone Awry

The Board of Health had put much thought into the leper settlement's establishment. It chose Molokai because its geography was ideal for enforcing the isolation and segregation policy. Like other Hawaiian islands, Molokai was formed by a volcanic eruption from the ocean floor. As the fires under the crust of the earth exploded upward, Molokai rose out of the sea, a spectacular palisade reaching three to four thousand feet above the ocean. A later eruption within the high island poured hot lava into the sea. The volcanic flow piled up until it formed a shelf at the base of Molokai's high cliffs. This peninsula sticks out into the ocean like a dirty brown furrowed tongue. There is no way to leave the peninsula except to plunge into the ocean or to climb up the huge vertical precipice surrounding the peninsula on three sides. The Board of Health knew that the peninsula was a natural prison, for no one suffering the ravages of leprosy could possibly scale the cliffs surrounding the colony. Most of Molokai's non-leper population lived on the high plateau which embraces more than ninety percent of the island's land area. The leper colony was established at Kalawao on a part of the peninsula described above.

Molokai's first lepers lived on, died on, and were buried in their mats. Authorities expected these poor people, weakened and crippled by their disease, to till the rich soil, raise cattle, and feed themselves. At first the government provided a few miserable grass huts for shelter. Abandoned lepers perished from hunger and cold.

Molokai's palisades are covered with heavy green vegetation.      Great cataracts of water from the frequent rainstorms that lash Molokai, plunge down her cliffsides. At certain seasons of the year, winds carrying chill and dampness, cascade down from the mountains onto the leper colony. Huddled in their flimsy huts, the lepers suffer grievously from the cold. "A heavy windstorm," Damien reported after arrival, "blew down most of the rotten abodes, and many a weakened leper lay in the wind and rain with his blanket and wet clothing."

Father Damien was deeply moved by leper children. He struggled to preserve them from the physical and moral corruption of Molokai.

Damien's Colony Of Death

At the outset of his mission Damien aimed to restore in each leper a sense of personal worth and dignity. To show his poor battered flock the value of their lives, he had to demonstrate to them the value of their deaths. And so he turned his attention first to the cemetery area beside his little chapel. He fenced it around to protect the graves from the pigs, dogs, and other scavengers. He constructed coffins and dug graves. He organized the lepers into the Christian Burial Association to provide decent burial for each deceased. The organization arranged for the requiem Mass, the proper funeral ceremonies, and sponsored a musical group that played during the funeral procession.

Damien continued to minister to the sick, bringing the Sacraments of confession and Holy Communion and annointing bedridden lepers. He washed their bodies, bandaged their wounds and tidied their rooms and beds. He did all he could to make them as comfortable as possible.

He encouraged lepers to help him in all his activities. With their assistance he built everything from coffins to cottages. He constructed the rectory, built a home for the lepers' children. When the colony expanded along the peninsula to Kalaupapa, he hustled the lepers into construction of a good road between Kalawao and Kalaupapa. Under his direction, lepers blasted rocks at the Kalaupapa shoreline and opened a decent docking facility. Damien taught his people to farm, 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 threatened to destroy.

Under Damien's vigorous lead, a sense of dignity and joy—and order replaced Molokai's despair and lawlessness. Neat, painted cottages, many of which the priest himself constructed, replaced the colony's miserable shacks.

He harried the government authorities. In their eyes he was "obstinate, headstrong, brusk and officious." Joseph Dutton later on speaks of him as "vehement and excitable in regard to matters that did not seem to him right, and he sometimes said and did things that he afterwards regretted..., but he had a true desire to do right, to bring about what he thought was best. No doubt he erred sometimes in judgement.... In certain periods he got along smoothly with everyone, and at times he was urgent for improvements. In some cases he made for confusion, as various government authorities would not agree with him."

In all things his lepers came first. It would be a mistake, however, to think of Damien as a single-minded fanatic. He was a human being who was quick to smile, of pleasant disposition, of open and frank countenance.

No one could deny that he was a headstrong person. But no one who knew him could deny that he was a man of warm and tender heart. He quickly forgave injuries and never bore a      grudge.

Charles Warren Stoddard, an American writer, first visited Molokai in 1868, five years before Damien's arrival. He 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. Molokai 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.

In 1888, the Englishman Edward Clifford visited Damien. "I had gone to Molokai expecting to find it scarcely less dreadful than hell itself," Clifford wrote, "and the cheerful people, the lovely landscapes, and comparatively painless life were all suprises. These poor people seemed singularly happy."

Clifford asked lepers if they missed not being back home. They replied, "Oh, no! We're well off here. The government watches over us, the superintendent is good, and we like our pastor. He builds our houses himself, he gives us tea, biscuits, sugar and clothes. He takes good care of us and doesn't let us want for anything."

The Holy Man

Damien was completely aware of the Hawaiians' childlike nature. Simple, generous, hospitable people, the Hawaiians were most attractive. They remained, however, children of Adam and could be licentious, lazy, and, at times, mean-spirited. Damien was not blind to their defects. Ambrose Hutchinson describes the immorality that continued to plague the colony despite Damien's best efforts.

Drinkers and dancers met in a remote area of the leper settlement called "the crazy pen." From time to time Damien      raided this scabrous spot, and with his walking stick he broke up dancing and knocked over the liquor bottles. Hutchinson writes: "The hilarious feasters made a quick getaway from the place through the back door to escape Damien's big stick. He would not hesitate to lay it on good and hard on the poor hapless one who happened to come within reach of his cane."

His disciplinary measures did not hurt church attendance. The lepers came to St. Philomena's in such numbers that he had to enlarge the chapel. But even expanded facilities could not contain the worshipers. On Sundays, overflow crowds peered through the church windows to participate in the divine services.

Visitors never forgot the sights and sounds of a Sunday Mass at St. Philomena's Chapel. Damien, clear-eyed and devout, stood at the altar. Strong, muscular, a picture of vitality and health, the priest's face was kind and his concern for the people evident. His lepers gathered around him on the altar. Some were blind. They constantly coughed and expectorated. The odor was overpowering. Yet Damien never once wavered or showed his disgust. Damien placed, of all things, poor boxes in the church. Because the blind often missed the slot, the pastor placed a little bell inside the      poor box. When the sightless leper's coin had dropped safely      into the box, the bell rang.

Hawaiians love to sing, and St. Philomena's choir had no shortage of candidates. Because leprosy often attacked vocal cords, leper voices produced peculiar sounds. Nevertheless, the choir sang joyfully.

Damien's life was suffused with horror, yet he refused to be broken by it and refused to permit his little flock to be swept into despair. He ran foot races for the sports-loving lepers, even though some of them had no feet. He formed a band, even though some had few fingers to play the instruments. One witness reported two organists who played at the same time, managing ten fingers between them.

Damien—A World Figure

News of Damien's deeds spread from Hawaii to Europe to America. The priest of Molokai became front-page news. Funds poured in from all over the world. An Anglican priest,      Reverend Hugh Chapman, organized, through the help of the      London Times, a highly successful fund drive. Damien's notoriety and fund-raising drew the ire of the Hawaiian government and his own religious superiors. Both accused him of playing the press for his own selfish reasons. The government was unhappy, because it felt Damien's begging gave the Hawaiian effort to combat leprosy a bad image. Walter Gibson, Prime Minister of the Hawaiian king, felt that his government was most generous toward the lepers. It was spending fifty thousand dollars a year, which represented five percent of its total taxes, on leper care. No other government in the world could point to such a proud health-care record.

The superiors of the Sacred Hearts mission were distressed because they felt Damien was giving the Congregation's Fathers and Brothers a bad image. The press made it seem as      if he were the only Sacred Hearts missionary willing to serve the colony. His superiors knew this was not true. And they took it as an affront to the whole Congregation. His superiors further accused Damien of being a "loner" because of his unhappy relationship with the three assistants they had sent him at different times. In all fairness, it probably is true that no one else could have lived with any of the three priests. But no one was more irritated by Damien's fame than Hawaii's Yankee missionaries.

Stern Puritan divines felt leprosy was the inevitable result of the Hawaiian people's licentiousness. In their puritanical judgement the Hawaiian people were corrupt and debased. The segregation policy would have to be enforced to hasten the inevitable physical and moral collapse of the essentially rotten Hawaiian culture. There were medical doctors who were so convinced of an essential connection between leprosy and sexual immorality that they insisted that leprosy could be spread only through sexual contact.

When Damien entered his prison at Molokai, he had to make a decision. He believed that the Hawaiians were basically good and not essentially corrupt. And now he had to show them belief, regardless of the price. Thus, somewhere during the first part of his stay he made the dread decision to set aside his fear of contagion. He touched his lepers, he embraced them, he dined with them, he cleaned and bandaged      their wounds and sores. He placed the host upon their battered mouths. He put his thumb on their forehead when he annointed them with the holy oil. All these actions involved touch. Touch is, of course, necessary if one is to communicate love and concern. The Hawaiians instinctively knew this. And that is why the Hawaiians shrank from the Yankee divines. Although these Yankee religious leaders expended much money on their mission endeavors, few Hawaiians joined their churches. The islanders sensed the contempt in which the puritan minds held them.

On this altar which he constructed, Father Damien celebrated      Mass each day. From the Eucharist, the priest drew strength      to continue his lonely and perilous mission. After leprosy claimed him, and he entered into his "peculiar Golgotha," he found his deepest consolation and hope in the Mass.

Damien was not, as we have noted, blind to the Hawaiians' very real faults. Many Hawaiians, by their irregular sexual habits, greatly contributed to the spread of leprosy. But Damien knew that was not the only way the disease was communicated. Above all, he rejected the insufferable notion that God had laid this disease as a curse upon these people, to wipe them off the face of the earth. Damien hated leprosy. He didn't see it as a tool of a vengeful God. He saw it as a suffering that man must eliminate. God loved the leper. No man had the right to scorn him.

Thus, very early in his apostolate at Molokai, Damien was impelled to identify himself as closely as possible with his lepers. Long before he had the disease, he spoke of himself and the people of Molokai as "we lepers." Six months after his arrival at Kalawao he wrote his brother in Europe: "...I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ. That is why, in preaching, I say 'we lepers'; not, 'my brethren....'"

Damien embraced the leper but not leprosy. He lived in great      dread of the disease. When he first experienced leprosy's symptomatic itching, while still a missionary at Kohala, some years before he went to Molokai, he knew then that the loathing diseased threatened him. Even when the disease had run a good bit of its brutal course through his body, he still at times seemed to refuse to admit he was a victim. But leprosy finally claimed him. It was the final price God exacted from Damien to show his sense of community and oneness with his poor afflicted flock.

Some said there was a connection between leprosy and venereal disease. In order to witness against those who claimed leprosy could only be spread by sexual contact, Damien submitted to the indignity of having his blood and body examined in detail after he had contracted the disease. Doctor Arning, a world-famous specialist in the disease, reported, after examination, that Damien had no sign of syphilis. In a signed statement dictated to Brother Joseph Dutton, his co-worker, Damien wrote, "I have never had sexual intercourse with anyone whomsoever."

History has borne out the wisdom of Damien's decision to take these embarrassing measures. Shortly after Damien's death, a Yankee divine of Honolulu, Doctor Charles McEwen Hyde, bitterly attacked the priest's moral life. The good clergyman opined that Damien got leprosy because he was licentious.

Father Damien was not lacking defenders. In a magnificent statement, Robert Louis Stevenson, who had visited Molokai after Damien's death, rose to champion the priest's cause. The author's defense of Damien rested upon the complete sacrifice the man made of his life. A sacrifice no Yankee missionary in Hawaii had duplicated.

The Knight Commander

The Hawaiian government decorated Father Damien with the      Cross of the Royal Order of Kalakaua (above, left). The priest accepted the award but rarely wore the medal. In later stages of his own illness, Damien remarked, "The Lord decorated me with his own particular cross—leprosy."

If some white missionaries scorned Father Damien, most Hawaiians loved him. In September 1881, Hawaiian Princess      Liliuokalani visited Molokai. The Princess, moved deeply by      the lepers' suffering, was unable to give the speech she had prepared. Leaving Molokai with a broken heart, she returned      to Honolulu and requested Father Damien to accept the Hawaiian Order of Knight Commander of the Royal Order of      Kalakaua in recognition of his "efforts in alleviating the distress and mitigating the sorrows of the unfortunate." With pleasure, Damien accepted the award. He felt it would bring attention to his lepers. There were many Americans, too, both in Hawaii and on the mainland, who recognized the work that Damien was doing and who sent, with characteristic American generosity, funds and other forms of help to him. In Honolulu, American Protestants were among his most generous benefactors. Opening their hearts and their purses to Damien, they sent him food, medicines, clothing, and all sorts of help for his mission.

My Insupportable Melancholy

Damien was alone of the frontier of death. His loneliness oppressed him. He speaks of his "black thoughts" and the "insupportable melancholy that arose from his lack of religious companionship." The Board of Health remonstrated      with him because, ignoring the isolation policy, he climbed up and down the palisades to build chapels and to bring the Sacraments to the healthy people who dwelt on Molokai's plateau. His superiors were displeased with his trips to Honolulu. They felt he gave bad example in the face of the government's policy on segregation of lepers. Furthermore, two Sacred Hearts Fathers, laboring in other parts of the Hawaiian Islands, had contracted leprosy. The superiors did not want to force them to Molokai. They felt that Damien, by leaving the colony, might just precipitate a government crackdown.

He continually begged his superiors for a confrere, not only to assist him in the ever-mounting work, but also to provide spiritual comfort for him. He hungered above all for a priestly companion to whom he could confess and receive the Sacrament of Penance. His writings reveal his concern that he would forget the true purpose of his life. In a little notebook, he counseled himself: "Be severe toward yourself, indulgent toward others. Have scrupulous exactitude for everything regarding God: prayer, meditation, Mass, administration of the Sacraments. Unite your heart with God.... Remember always your three vows, by which you are dead to the things of the world. Remember always that God is eternal and work courageously in order one day to be united with him forever."

During one 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 The Leper

One day in December, 1884, while soaking his feet in extremely hot water, Father De Veuster experienced no sensation of heat or pain. The evil disease he had battled for so long now claimed him. In his last years he engaged in a flurry of activity. He hastened to complete his many building projects, enlarge his orphanages, organize his work. Help came from four unexpected sources. A priest, a soldier, a male nurse, and a nun. The soldier, Joseph Dutton, was the most unusual man. He had survived Civil War combat, a broken marriage, 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 was never seriously ill until just before his death in 1931. He was just short of eighty-eight. Another layman, James Sinnett, a man who had a colorful and checkered career, during which he gained some experience in nursing in Mercy Hospital, 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 his secretary. He was faithful to the very end, and when Damien died, Sinnett left the colony. Nothing was heard from him thereafter.

Father Louis-Lambert Conrardy, 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 this, Conrardy provided the spiritual and social companionship that Damien so desperately craved.

The Sister who now offered at this critical junction support for Damien and his work, was Mother Marianne Kopp, Superior of the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, New York, who served the Honolulu leper hospital. Damien 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 at Molokai. To this day, not one of them has ever contracted leprosy.

Damien's Last Days

In October, 1885, Damien wrote his superior, Father Leonor Fouesnel, in the Hawaiian Islands: "I am a leper. Blessed be the good God. I only ask one favor of you. Send someone to this tomb to be my confessor." (This was three years before Conrardy's arrival.) He wrote his General in Rome, "I have been decorated by the royal Cross of Kalakaua and now the heavier and less honorable cross of leprosy. Our Lord has willed that I be stigmatized with it.... I am still up and taking care of myself a little. I will keep on working...."

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. "If you come," Father Superior advised Damien, "you will be relegated to a room which you are not to leave until your departure." Father Fouesnel suggested that if Damien insisted on coming to Honolulu, he stay at the      Franciscan Sisters' leper hospital. "But if you go there," the superior counseled, "please do not say Mass. For neither Father Clement nor I will consent to celebrate Mass with the      same chalice and the same vestments you have used. The Sisters will refuse to receive Holy Communion from your hands." One can understand the superior's concern. But Damien was being forced, nevertheless, to consume the bitter      wine of loneliness to its dregs. He now knew not only the physical sufferings of Christ but the harrowing loneliness and abandonment of his Savior. Damien did go to Honolulu and remained at the leprosarium from July 10 to 16. It was during the time that he arranged with Mother Marianne to come to Molokai. He spoke of his rejection by his own as "the greatest suffering he had ever endured in his life."

The Sorrowful Mother

Catherine De Veuster, Damien's mother, had lived all these years on the occasional letters he wrote to her from Molokai. He had tried to keep her from the news of his leprosy. But inevitably she found out. Someone advised her that the newspapers said, "the flesh of the leper priest of Molokai was falling off in hunks." It was too much for Catherine. Now eighty-three years of age, a widow for thirteen years, the shock of the sufferings of her son broke her old heart. On April 5, 1886, about four in the afternoon, turning her eyes for the last time toward the image of the Blessed Mother and the picture of her son, she bowed her head in that direction and died calmly and peacefully.

Doctor Mouritz, medical attendant at Molokai, charted the progress of the physical dissolution of Damien's body. He writes: "The skin of the abdomen, chest, the back, are beginning to show tubercles, masses of infiltration.... The membranes of the nose, roof of the mouth, pharynx, and larynx are involved; the skin of his cheeks, nose, lips, forehead, and chin are excessively swollen.... His body is becoming emaciated."

An ever-deepening mental distress accompanied Damien's physical dissolution. A severe depression, as well as religious scruples, now plagued the leper priest. Damien felt he was unworthy of heaven. The rejection by his religious superiors left him in near disarray. Once he claimed: "From the rest of the world I received gold and frankincense, but from my own superiors myrrh" (a bitter herb). His superiors complained about Father Conrardy's presence on Molokai. Conrardy was not a religious of the Sacred Hearts, and they felt that Damien had encouraged his presence there as a reproach to their ineffectual efforts to provide him with a companion. Soon after Damien's death, the Sacred Hearts superiors maneuvered Father Conrardy out of the colony.

As death approached, Father Damien engaged in a flurry of activity. He worked as much as his wounded and broken body would permit him. He wrote his bishop, entreating not to be dispensed from the obligation of the Breviary, which he continued to recite as best he could as his eyes failed. The      disease invading his windpipe progressed to such an extent that it kept him from sleeping more than an hour or two at night. His voice was reduced to a raucous whisper. Leprosy was in his throat, his lungs, his stomach, and his intestines. After ravaging his body outwardly, it was now destroying him from within.

As the end drew near, there were priests of his own Congregation to hear his confession. They had come with the      Franciscan Sisters. On March 30, one of them, a Father Moellers, heard Damien's last confession. The leper priest had requested a funeral pall, which the Sisters made from him and delivered from Honolulu. It arrived the same day. Two more weeks of suffering, and on April 15, 1889, Damien died. It was Holy Week. Some weeks before, Damien had said that the Lord wanted him to spend Easter in heaven.

Once he had written, "The cemetery, the church and rectory form one enclosure; thus at nighttime I am still keeper of this garden of the dead, where my spiritual children lie at rest. My greatest pleasure is to go there to say my by beads and meditate on that unending happiness which so many of them are enjoying." And now it was his turn to occupy a little plot of ground in "his garden of the dead."

He no longer meditated on that unending happiness, but now      most surely possessed it. Long ago he had selected the precise spot for his grave amid the two thousand lepers buried in Molokai cemetery. Coffin bearers laid him to rest under his pandanus tree. It was the same tree that had sheltered him the day he read those fateful words: "You may      stay as long as your devotion dictates...."


SOURCE: http://www.ewtn.com/saintsHoly/saints/D/stdamienofmolokai.asp#ixzz1uSLv37QS