Saint Damien of Molokai

Taking a brother's place

Damien of Molokai was born Joseph de Veuster on January 3, 1840, in Tremelo, Belgium. In 1858 he joined the Society of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, taking the name Damien in honor of a 4th-century Christian martyr and physician. When his brother Father Pamphile, originally assigned to missionary work in Hawaii, fell ill, Damien took his place, arriving in Honolulu in 1864 and being ordained a priest there that same year.

Volunteering for a colony no one else wanted

Moved by the miserable conditions of people with leprosy whom the Hawaiian government had deported to Kalaupapa, on the island of Molokai, Damien volunteered to take charge of the settlement himself. Over sixteen years there, he improved the colony's water and food supplies and housing, and founded two orphanages — receiving help from other priests for only six of those sixteen years.

The disease he came to fight

In 1884, after two decades of close daily contact with people suffering from leprosy, Damien contracted the disease himself. He refused to leave the island for treatment elsewhere, choosing instead to remain among the community he had served for so long, and died of the disease in 1889 at the age of forty-nine.

Canonized after two verified miracles

Damien of Molokai was canonized in 2009, after the Church determined that two miraculous healings attributed to his intercession were authentic. His sixteen years on Molokai, and the disease that eventually took his life, remain the defining measure of a ministry built entirely on staying where he was needed most.