Today’s blog is to tell you about an amazing and courageous man who lived in the 1800s. For those of you who are not aware of his story, I was just like you. Only recently did I come to learn about Father Damien of Molokai. My inadequate knowledge of leprosy was that it was a contagious disease that terrorized people in the “olden days.” Wow! Was I ever wrong!
There are still people who have it today. This man was a Roman Catholic missionary from Belgium.He became well known to many because he offered his life to help people with leprosy who had been quarantined by a government-sanction to an Hawaiian island called Molokai.
In the 1800’s the people who had been diagnosed with leprosy had been dropped off of ships to attempt to make their ways to the rocky shore of this island which was populated only with other lepers. There were no doctors, medicines or housing available to these people.
There was no potable water. Father Damien, decided to go to the island and live there to help the lepers. He eventually contracted and died of the disease. In Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches, Damien is considered a saint, one who is holy and worthy of public veneration. In the Anglican religion, as well as other denominations of Christianity, Damien is considered the spiritual patron for Hansen’s Disease, HIV and AIDS patients and outcasts.
Pope Benedict XVI just canonized Father Damien October 11, 2009. What an unbelievable example to all of us. Maybe some of us are treating people with AIDS of HIV the same way that the lepers were treated because of ignorance and misconceptions. Just a final bit of information: The youngest living leper on the island of Molokai is seventy years old. When the last leper dies, the island will be finally opened up to the vast number of people who have waited to visit the island.
