Father Damien was an energetic, compassionate, affectionate, and exuberant man of action, who felt compelled to improve the lives of the lepers banished to the Hawaiian island of Molokai.  He was also impatient, out-spoken, and less than tactful when it came to getting the resources needed for his work.  Thus, he accomplished what no other person was willing to do – he restored hope and dignity to society’s greatest outcasts – but he suffered much undue criticism in the process.  The world has come to see his contributions as the radically generous, selfless work that it was...something that the lepers whose lives he touched knew all along.
-- Margaret Wakeley

Westerners had arrived in the Hawaiian Islands only late in the eighteenth century, finding a native population of about three hundred thousand.  Within a hundred years the ravages of disease had reduced this number to fifty thousand.  Among many illnesses, the most dreaded scourge was leprosy.  The first case appeared only in 1840, but within thirty years it had reached epidemic proportions.  Helpless to control its spread and unable at that time to offer any remedy, the authorities responded in 1868 by establishing a leper settlement on the remote and inaccessible island of Molokai.  By law, Hawaiians found to be suffering from the disease were snatched by force from their families and communities and sent to this island exile to perish.

It was to this island that Father Damien was assigned.  From the beginning he sought to instill in the members of his “parish” a sense of self-worth and dignity.  His first task was to restore dignity to death.  Where previously the deceased were tossed into shallow graves to be consumed by pigs and dogs, he designed a clean and fenced-in cemetery and established a proper burial society.  He constructed a church and worked alongside the people building clean new houses.  Within several years of his arrival the island was utterly transformed, no longer a way-station to death, it had become a proud and joyful community.

As part of his effort to uplift the self-esteem of his flock, Damien realized from the beginning that he must not shrink from contact with the people.  Despite the horrid physical effects of the disease, he insisted on intimate contact with them.  When he preached, he made a habit of referring to his flock not as “my brothers and sisters,“ but as “we lepers.” 

One day this reference assumed a new meaning, as Damien recognized in himself the unmistakable symptoms of the disease.  Now he was truly one with the suffering of his people, literally confined, as they were, to the island of Molokai.  Despite the advancing illness, which eventually ravaged his body, he redoubled his efforts, working tirelessly in his building projects and his pastoral responsibilities.

In his last years he suffered terrible bouts of loneliness, feeling keenly the lack of a religious community of support, and even the opportunity to receive absolution.  On one occasion a visiting bishop refused to disembark from his ship.  Damien rowed out to meet him and suffered the humiliation of shouting up his confession.  Because of fear of contagion he was even forbidden to visit the mission headquarters of his order in Honolulu.

Damien died of leprosy on April 15, 1889.  By that time his fame had spread widely throughout the world.  He was beatified in 1995 by Pope John Paul II.

Additional Resources
See:  Gavan Dawes, Holy Man, Fr. Damien of Molokai (New York:  Harper & Row, 1973).