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Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai
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"Beautifully written, deeply perceptive." -- Los Angeles Times
"An absolutely fascinating book." --The Washington Post
"Beautifully written, deeply perceptive." -- Los Angeles Times
"An absolutely fascinating book." --The Washington Post
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
9 people are currently reading
255 people want to read
About the author
Gavan Daws
40 books13 followersGavan Daws (b. 1933) is an American writer, historian and filmmaker residing in Honolulu, Hawaii. He writes about Hawaii, the Pacific, and Asia. He is a retired professor of history at University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Daws is originally from Australia and got his B.A. in English and History from the University of Melbourne. He has a Ph.D. in Pacific History from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
His best-known works are Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, in print since 1968; Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, the biography of a nineteenth-century missionary priest to Hawaii who served leprosy sufferers, and who has recently been canonized; and Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. Daws co-produced and co-directed Angels of War: The People of Papua New Guinea and World War II, which won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary. His other work includes song lyrics and a stage play with music and choreography. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia, and served as the Pacific member of the UNESCO Commission on the Scientific and Cultural History of Humankind.
Daws is originally from Australia and got his B.A. in English and History from the University of Melbourne. He has a Ph.D. in Pacific History from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
His best-known works are Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, in print since 1968; Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, the biography of a nineteenth-century missionary priest to Hawaii who served leprosy sufferers, and who has recently been canonized; and Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. Daws co-produced and co-directed Angels of War: The People of Papua New Guinea and World War II, which won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary. His other work includes song lyrics and a stage play with music and choreography. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia, and served as the Pacific member of the UNESCO Commission on the Scientific and Cultural History of Humankind.
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June 25, 2014
Like Father Damien of Molokai I had also once lived with lepers. Unlike him, however, I had lived with lepers at that time when modern medicine could already check the progress of the disease. So the lepers I had mingled with, although already scarred for life, were more or less already deemed "cured." The most common physical deformity I remember of them, practically all of them, was the way their hands looked. It seemed leprosy never exempt any of its victims with this: the fingers fold at their middle joints, like one sometimes see in comatose people in a vegetative state. So when they try to hold something (e.g. a chess piece during a game) it'd look like as if they had grabbed some glue and their fingers got stuck inwards to their palms.
How I got to be with lepers was not as dramatic as the story of Father Damien of Molokai. My grandparents contacted this disease, maybe in the early 1930's during the American Occupation. They then already had their respective families and were living miles apart: my grandfather was from an island town south of Luzon while my grandmother was from the north. It is still a mystery up to now how one could suddenly get the disease in the middle of a community with no known leper around or any history of the disease but these two were among those unfortunate ones. I do not know if they surrendered themselves voluntarily or were among those who at first tried to hide from those rounding up the lepers upon orders of the American authorities, but both ended up at the leper colony in Culion, a remote island like Father Damien's Molokai, at the Palawan group of islands similar to the Hawaiian islands where Molokai was.
The science of leprosy cure was still at its infancy at that time and they were probably both conscious that they had come to that beautiful island to die away from their families. They probably grieved for a long time, watched the sunrise and sunset for months, before finally casting their eyes upon each other and with their shared loneliness fell in love. They had three children and one of them--the middle child--was my father born in 1937, one of the 144 babies born that year in that leper colony.
About half a century before, during Father Damien's time, they still had no idea how leprosy is transmitted from a leper to a healthy person. One theory was that it is hereditary. Well, in our case this had been proven false. My father, his two siblings, their numerous children and grandchildren never showed signs of the disease.
I never met my grandfather. Apparently, after he and my grandmother were discharged from Culion he went back to his own family and died there. My grandmother, on the other hand, went to the Tala Leprosarium (now part of the Metro Manila area) where she got a house, raised many cats, established some businesses, and then, after my grandfather passed away, married another leper who had been cured (but with the same hands with folded fingers!), a veteran of World War 1. He was the grandfather I knew. And it was there at the Tala Leprosarium where I spent countless summer vacations and met my lepers. I'd say those were among the happiest days of my young life. I was a pimply youth but when I was with my lepers I felt like I had the nicest complexion in that entire community and was ready to do a soap commercial.
Father Damien was born to a devout Catholic Belgian family. His elder brother was also a priest and a sister became a nun. Hawaii was then not yet a part of the USA. It was ruled by a monarch and its indigenous population was being decimated by diseases brought to the islands by white men. Among these was leprosy.
At that time no medicine had worked yet against this biblical scourge. It was a horrible disease and meant a slow and sure death. To get a picture of how it kills, imagine the human body like its is a finely sculptured piece of candlewax with wicks all over. Then each of these are lighted one by one. As the body melts it'd take so many grotesque forms. That is leprosy.
"It was one thing to volunteer to serve the diseased, but quite another to take the intimate measure of Kalawao (the leper colony in Molokai). Damien's ministry became a priesthood of worms, of ghastly sights and suffocating smells, of the most awful physical and spiritual misery. There were six hundred leprosy sufferers at the settlement; and, apart from the healthy Hawaiian 'kokua,' Damien was the only man there with a sound, uncorrupted body--the only 'haole', certainly.
"Other priests making brief visits were reduced, often enough, to speechlessness or weeping incoherence; later, they would write horror-struck letters about the experience, full of revolting detail and exclamation points. Even at second hand the horror was fresh. One of Damien's visiting colleagues told another how 'he saw in the hospital a young woman aged about twenty, whose right side was nothing but a swarm of worms, thousands and thousands of them. All the intestines were bared, he saw the ribs as in a skeleton, but she was not suffering. He saw a leprous man busy cutting off a joint from his finger with a piece of glass. Finally he succeeded, and threw it tranquilly out the window as if it was cured, saying: there's an end to my trouble. Apparently the blood in the finger was poisoned, and it was as if a worm was devouring him from inside.'"
Father Damien was just twenty-three when he left Europe as a missionary priest. Eventually, he was assigned--happily it must be added--to the leper settlement in Molokai where he served as pastor for sixteen years. A physically strong and robust man, many years passed before he himself got the disease. He went through the same sufferings as those of his flock. He succumbed to it on 15 April 1889. He was just 49 years old.
How I got to be with lepers was not as dramatic as the story of Father Damien of Molokai. My grandparents contacted this disease, maybe in the early 1930's during the American Occupation. They then already had their respective families and were living miles apart: my grandfather was from an island town south of Luzon while my grandmother was from the north. It is still a mystery up to now how one could suddenly get the disease in the middle of a community with no known leper around or any history of the disease but these two were among those unfortunate ones. I do not know if they surrendered themselves voluntarily or were among those who at first tried to hide from those rounding up the lepers upon orders of the American authorities, but both ended up at the leper colony in Culion, a remote island like Father Damien's Molokai, at the Palawan group of islands similar to the Hawaiian islands where Molokai was.
The science of leprosy cure was still at its infancy at that time and they were probably both conscious that they had come to that beautiful island to die away from their families. They probably grieved for a long time, watched the sunrise and sunset for months, before finally casting their eyes upon each other and with their shared loneliness fell in love. They had three children and one of them--the middle child--was my father born in 1937, one of the 144 babies born that year in that leper colony.
About half a century before, during Father Damien's time, they still had no idea how leprosy is transmitted from a leper to a healthy person. One theory was that it is hereditary. Well, in our case this had been proven false. My father, his two siblings, their numerous children and grandchildren never showed signs of the disease.
I never met my grandfather. Apparently, after he and my grandmother were discharged from Culion he went back to his own family and died there. My grandmother, on the other hand, went to the Tala Leprosarium (now part of the Metro Manila area) where she got a house, raised many cats, established some businesses, and then, after my grandfather passed away, married another leper who had been cured (but with the same hands with folded fingers!), a veteran of World War 1. He was the grandfather I knew. And it was there at the Tala Leprosarium where I spent countless summer vacations and met my lepers. I'd say those were among the happiest days of my young life. I was a pimply youth but when I was with my lepers I felt like I had the nicest complexion in that entire community and was ready to do a soap commercial.
Father Damien was born to a devout Catholic Belgian family. His elder brother was also a priest and a sister became a nun. Hawaii was then not yet a part of the USA. It was ruled by a monarch and its indigenous population was being decimated by diseases brought to the islands by white men. Among these was leprosy.
At that time no medicine had worked yet against this biblical scourge. It was a horrible disease and meant a slow and sure death. To get a picture of how it kills, imagine the human body like its is a finely sculptured piece of candlewax with wicks all over. Then each of these are lighted one by one. As the body melts it'd take so many grotesque forms. That is leprosy.
"It was one thing to volunteer to serve the diseased, but quite another to take the intimate measure of Kalawao (the leper colony in Molokai). Damien's ministry became a priesthood of worms, of ghastly sights and suffocating smells, of the most awful physical and spiritual misery. There were six hundred leprosy sufferers at the settlement; and, apart from the healthy Hawaiian 'kokua,' Damien was the only man there with a sound, uncorrupted body--the only 'haole', certainly.
"Other priests making brief visits were reduced, often enough, to speechlessness or weeping incoherence; later, they would write horror-struck letters about the experience, full of revolting detail and exclamation points. Even at second hand the horror was fresh. One of Damien's visiting colleagues told another how 'he saw in the hospital a young woman aged about twenty, whose right side was nothing but a swarm of worms, thousands and thousands of them. All the intestines were bared, he saw the ribs as in a skeleton, but she was not suffering. He saw a leprous man busy cutting off a joint from his finger with a piece of glass. Finally he succeeded, and threw it tranquilly out the window as if it was cured, saying: there's an end to my trouble. Apparently the blood in the finger was poisoned, and it was as if a worm was devouring him from inside.'"
Father Damien was just twenty-three when he left Europe as a missionary priest. Eventually, he was assigned--happily it must be added--to the leper settlement in Molokai where he served as pastor for sixteen years. A physically strong and robust man, many years passed before he himself got the disease. He went through the same sufferings as those of his flock. He succumbed to it on 15 April 1889. He was just 49 years old.
March 13, 2022
This is a well-balanced and informative biography of Father Damien and his work at the Kalawao leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. I expected this to be full of the hardships of working in an isolated leper colony, but I wasn’t quite expecting to learn so much about the political, denominational, and ecclesiastical conflicts that served as the backdrop to his life and service in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Damien faced not only the struggles of an incurable disease (and the descriptions of those he worked among are the stuff of nightmares), but depressing loneliness, monotony, the opposition of the Protestant haoles of Honolulu that controlled the levers of power, and even his own Catholic bishops who viewed him as a perpetual, embarrassing thorn in their side. The book does not stray into hagiography, but provides a sympathetic and balanced account of his remarkable self-sacrifice in the service of both God and the lowliest of men. 4 stars.
What follows are my notes on the book:
News of Father Damien’s death in 1889 raced around the world. In part because Robert Louis Stevenson, then suffering from tuberculosis, visited Molokai and wrote an open letter to rebut the hostile views of protestant minister Dr. Charles Hyde.
He was born Joseph De Veuster in 1840, the son of Flemish-speaking farmers in Belgium. Even as a youth he was religious, including the practice of sleeping on a hard board or the floor as some form of penance. He followed in his brother’s footsteps, becoming a postulate at the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts. He was not regarded as a candidate for the priesthood due to his deficiency in French, Latin, and Greek. But he was industrious and intelligent, and when he tackled his Latin lessons with enthusiasm, the Congregation reconsidered and put him on a 5-6 year track of studies.
When his brother contracted Typhus, Damien took his place on the 1863 mission to Hawaii. After a 148 day voyage, he arrived in Honolulu in March 1864. His bishop in Honolulu oversaw the rest of his studies and he was ordained a priest on May 21st. He departed for the big island in June 1864. His new district of Kohala-Hamakua was awesome in size, roughly 1000 square miles. Consequently he was always traveling, by horse if possible, but often through terrain you could only cross on foot.
He did some farming and was a prodigious builder of chapels. The Protestant leaders regarded the Sacred Heart Fathers as interlopers. As a result, Catholics faced opposition, and at times outright persecution throughout Damien’s tenure. Damien poured himself into learning the Hawaiian language. For a haole, he was unassuming in his habits. He did not stand on ceremony, liked the people, and would sit on the ground and eat their sticky food, unlike the Protestant ministers. Yet he still faced frustrations as many seemed disobedient or unteachable…consequently he too viewed the Hawaiians as children. For a man of such strict personal discipline, he was taken aback at the open sexuality of the natives. He faced great periods of loneliness and “dark thoughts.” He continually compared himself to his elder brother, living the comfortable life in Europe.
In 1873, he traveled to Maui for a church dedication and heard about the need for a mission to the leper colony on Molokai. Damien was one of four young priests who proposed to minister for several weeks at a time. So in May 1873, he departed for Molokai. Unusual for Damien, he heard an “inner voice” tell him he would never return to the big island. His new situation would be exceptional – lonely, difficult, hazardous.
His arrival occurred amidst a larger stirring in the politics of charity to the lepers. The “national blight” was forever in the Honolulu papers and the harshness of segregation laws (isolating lepers from the healthy) sparked gestures of sympathy. The news of his arrival sparked a surge in charitable feeling among the respectable white men in Honolulu. While it received less attention, Damien was not unique at this time. A Mormon elder was there (of course he had the disease), the Protestants had already built a church, and a Protestant deacon (again with the disease) was already at Kalawao. What set the popular imagination off was the belief that Damien was going there permanently. The Protestants of Honolulu were embarrassed by the self-sacrifice and accompanying publicity of this Catholic priest.
Damien did not restrict himself to the leper colony, but ministered in other areas of the island. In order to comply with the segregation laws, the Board decided send a second priest to Molokai who would focus on the healthy districts. Some Fathers believed this a Protestant plot to make Damien’s life intolerable and force him to leave the settlement (it wasn’t). The French Government protested on Damien’s behalf and it relaxed its regulations against doctors and ministers.
The tiny promontory at the base of the cliff was an unlikely place to live: four square miles of land, hard to get to or get away from, cut off from the rest of the island by the Pali (cliff) and ringed to seaward by a rocky shore with rough landing places. It was a natural prison. The hospital was in the lee of a cliff giving it late sunrises and early sunsets, making it frequently cold when wet winter winds blew in off the open ocean. The government believed the area capable of good farming, making it self-sufficient. They grossly overestimated the willingness of the lepers to work once exiled here. Even if it had to be sustained out of the Treasury, the Board expected the population would die out in several years (In fact, it lasted for half a century as a steady stream of new victims replaced the dying).
The colony was a brutal place, with the strong abusing the weak. Disease was killing off the Hawaiian people: cholera, smallpox, influenza, measles, venereal disease, and leprosy scythed down the natives. For some reason, leprosy largely left the white population alone. As leprosy became endemic, the segregation laws went into effect leading to a steady population of 500-1000 at Kalawao. The kanaka often considered segregation worse than the disease itself and hid infected relatives.
When protestant missionaries came to preach, they did so from an elevated distance (perfectly logical from a medical point of view) but from a spiritual outreach point of view it cast the lepers as unwanted untouchables. Hawaiians placed great emphasis on physical touch. To be a genuine kokua, the haole preachers would have to reach across race and disease and touch the leprous Hawaiians. Damien was the only healthy white man willing to do this.
His was a priesthood of worms, of ghastly sights, suffocating smells, and physical and spiritual misery. Most people who visited once had nightmares after viewing something like a young woman whose right side was nothing but thousands of worms among bare ribs or exposed intestines. He smoked his pipe heavily to help overcome the obnoxious stench of the diseased. His church quickly became too small for the growing crowds attending mass.
He periodically served as both priest and governor. Damien was exhausted and needed help. But when another priest named Burgerman arrived, they clashed over everything. No priest was perfect and to the bishops Damien left a lot to be desired. Alone and with limited communications, he tended to do things his own way. He was too quick to make demands and once supplies received used how he thought best.
In 1881, the King’s sister Liliuokalani visited Kalawao. She made Damien a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalakaua. When the French Father Albert Montiton arrived at Kalawao, he all but accused Damien of sexual immorality based off Honolulu hearsay. Another rocky start between priests. After 10 years of sacrifice, Montiton’s invasion led to disagreements about everything. The man who tolerated everything, could no longer tolerate this man and all but issued an ultimatum, him or me. 1882 ended without a decision.
By 1880, over half of the 800 leprosy victims were Catholics. The Board of Health relied on Damien to run the administration of the settlement. In addition to the hospital, there was a small store, a slaughterhouse, road and water pipe construction, blasting of rocks for better boat access, and coffins to be made and graves to dig. Damien did all these things. Leprosy doesn’t discriminate and attacks children equally. The unscrupulous turned the children into slaves or child prostitutes. So Damien got permission from the Board to take the orphans and built dormitories to house, protect, and teach them.
Surrounded by suffering, Damien was coming to terms with his own understanding of life and death. His meditation on death led to superabundant exertion and endurance. However high the government funds rose, they couldn’t keep up with the disease. The 800 lepers constituted roughly 2% of the native Hawaiian population. The political situation was precarious. Walter Gibson (the King’s Minister of everything) ran the Board of Health, but relied on the Protestant plantation owners to fund his government. The Sacred Heart mission had to tread carefully not to offend the Protestant majority.
The disease persisted remorselessly. The rigorous enforcement of the segregation law under King Lunalilo in 1873 intended to halt the spread showed no end in sight. The islands remained full of leprosy through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Rumors and theories that leprosy was a late stage of syphilis spread like wildfire, giving the Protestant haole population more fuel for self-righteousness and belief that Hawaiians were bringing this plague on themselves through their licentiousness. For a while Damien himself held to this view.
By 1884, Damien was officially diagnosed with the disease. Fathers Archambaux and Montiton had both come and gone quickly, once again leaving Damien without a companion and confessor. Their departure doubled Damien’s work at a time when a 5 minute walk fatigued him. In 1885, Damien asked to visit Kakaako hospital in Honolulu but was forbidden to. After some time, he did go and was even visited by King Kalakaua there. One reason for his visit was to try the new Goto treatment method from Japan. He was enthusiastic at first, introducing the treatment back at Kalawao, including lofty ideas for a whole “Goto complex.” For the first time in his life, he was learning the art of politics and public relations. Damien appeared to improve at first, but another priest concluded the treatment was actually making him worse.
Damien’s leprosy became public knowledge in the US and Europe in 1886. The Bishop and Board were flooded with letters offering to move to Kalawao and help. However, the one person who actually went wrote no letters and simply appeared in Honolulu offering to go. Barnes Dutton, a Civil War Union veteran converted to Catholicism and sought penance after a bad divorce and alcoholism. Though not ordained, he proved a capable companion and helper.
The Protestant Reverend Hugh Chapman of London also was impressed with Damien and began raising money for Kalawao. Over the next three years, he began sending sums that exceeded those of the Board of Health. Damien’s sacrificial hero story merited a villain (or villains). The “dreadful delinquencies” of the Hawaiian government, the Board of Health, and Bishops were painted with that brush by public opinion. This embarrassing charity from foreigners made leprosy political again, threatening to undermine the delicate alliance between the government, Board, and Sacred Hearts. This happened at the worst possible time as the government was facing huge national debt and the scandals in the palace involving bribes and monopoly contracts. This would lead to the fall of Gibson, the Catholic’s only friend in power.
Bishop Koeckmann believed the Damien had become an embarrassment to the mission and the government. While almost universally praised elsewhere, his Catholic superiors now viewed him as an incorrigible troublemaker. Damien was taken aback by both the publicity and the attacks on him for unwittingly generating it. Koeckemann believed Damien was too demanding (he did have other missions besides Kalawao) and that he had exaggerated the leper’s misery in letters sent to the four winds. In reality, Damien sent all his letters through Honolulu, unsealed so they could be read first and in reality, no more than a handful were ever published during his lifetime. To be plain Bishop Koeckemann and Father Fouesnel were out of their depth.
While all this was going on, haole militiamen had paraded enough to force a new Constitution and Cabinet on Kalakaua and remove Walter Gibson from the government. The revolution of 1887 meant personnel changes to the Board of Health and tightening of the segregation laws. Fathers Archambaux and Burgerman were both lepers but allowed to continue living in Lahaina on Maui. With the change at the Board, Archambaux was returned to Kalawao, but because of his asthma did not stay long and escaped to Kakaako hospital in Honolulu. The tougher enforcement of the segregation laws sent freshly diagnosed patients to Kalawao by the shipload.
As Damien’s health deteriorated, he became calm and permanently gloomy. Damien was occasionally troubled by the delusion of his being unworthy of heaven. By 1888, the settlement was bigger than ever (above a 1000 patients and over 374 buildings). As the settlement grew, his cares grew, till his activities became endless, a kind of priestly perpetual motion. His orphanage remained close to his heart with more than a 100 boys and girls. By 1887, he had added two eating halls to the existing dormitories. He desired Sisters to come help run them. When rumors of Episcopalian Englishwomen were coming, Damien’s superiors were furious and felt he was forcing their hand to send good Catholic Sisters into an earthly hell. This was hardly true, some of the Catholic nuns wanted to go and did eventually in 1888.
His superiors criticized his independence and used his inability to get along with Burgerman, Montiton, and Archambaux as examples (but failed to note that few people ever got along with those three). The truth is Koeckemann had willing volunteers and could easily have extricated himself from under this criticism by sending Damien help but never did. Over the years spent at Kalawao, Damien was alone more than half the time. With no help from the Sacred Hearts, Damien agitated for a confessor from outside. When Father Conrardy (another Belgian) came, Koeckemann was mortified by the positive press for the new “hero of Kalawao.” Conrardy’s letters found their way into the press, once again embarrassing the government for their lack of support.
When Franciscan Sisters were sent to Kalawao in 1888, the Bishop believed Damien (a leper) and Conrardy (an outsider) were not suitable to serve as their chaplain. So after years of begging for another full time priest, the Bishop finally sent one, but only for the Sisters, not to aid Damien. In his last year of life, and suffering from the full effects of the disease (puffy face, broken skin, swollen eyes, horse voice, etc), Damien continued to be in the thick of the work rebuilding the church which had collapsed after a bad storm.
In early 1889, he took a turn for the worse with painful eruptions on his skin and violent diarrhea and coughing. By March 23rd he was bedridden. He was administered extreme unction on April 2nd. He died on April 15, 1889. Damien never sought fame and sought to live unknown to the world. After his death, his brother Pamphile felt released from any vow of silence on his behalf and published his letters. Within the mission there was a strong desire to remove Damien’s chosen successor Father Conrardy. Protesting to the last, Conrardy left Molokai in 1895. The mission called Pamphile in his place. From the moment he arrived, he felt useless as a substitute for his brother. Pamphile was a quiet, retiring man who was a linguist and a scholar, not the rough-and-ready worker his brother was. He wanted desperately to return to Louvain and was finally give permission a little more than a year after his arrival.
Damien’s death led to broad public support to continue funding Kalawao (notable backers of this included the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baron de Rothschild, and the Prince of Wales). England also poured money into researching the disease, but as it became clear it was not incredibly contagious and Britain was not threatened (by leprosy from India), the funding dried up. Efforts to install and dedicate a monument of Damien would be postponed for at least two years as Hawaii sugar plantations began to struggle based of changing tariff laws in the US.
Hawaiians were abandoning Protestantism, right as Charles Hyde and the Protestant-Americans were politically ascendant in Hawaii. Unwilling or unable to return to their native religious traditions, gravitated toward Catholicism or Mormonism. Damien’s example was a reproach to respectable, Honolulu Protestants, so Hyde proposed to expunge the criticism by pointing to Damien’s leprosy (i.e. trying hard to associate the dirty disease contracted through licentious behavior). However, as eye witness accounts, records, and history would bear out, there was no case to be made here. Damien had his faults and character flaws but in this are he was above reproach. Hyde did not emerge from this business well. By attacking Damien, he himself had become something of a leper in society himself.
In the years since his death, life at the settlement went on but the center of activity shifted from Kalawao to Kalaupapa a few miles away. By the 1920s, the rigorous enforcement of segregation laws seemed to work and the leprosy epidemic was ending. By the 1940s, new drugs were proving effective at treating the disease.
His superiors in Honolulu were reluctant to initiate any examination of Damien for sainthood. His celebrity had been nothing but a vexation and his posthumous publicity was equally baneful. The Sacred Hearts Father General pressed the issue (their small congregation had produced no saints). They half-heartedly investigated and produced a muted report. The process of beatification would have to wait until all who knew him died. In 1936 his remains were exhumed and returned to Louvain. In 1938 beatification proceedings began. In 1959 upon becoming a state, his statue joined that of Kamehameha in the US capitol.
This was published in 1973. Damien was beatified in 1995 and canonized in 2009.
What follows are my notes on the book:
News of Father Damien’s death in 1889 raced around the world. In part because Robert Louis Stevenson, then suffering from tuberculosis, visited Molokai and wrote an open letter to rebut the hostile views of protestant minister Dr. Charles Hyde.
He was born Joseph De Veuster in 1840, the son of Flemish-speaking farmers in Belgium. Even as a youth he was religious, including the practice of sleeping on a hard board or the floor as some form of penance. He followed in his brother’s footsteps, becoming a postulate at the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts. He was not regarded as a candidate for the priesthood due to his deficiency in French, Latin, and Greek. But he was industrious and intelligent, and when he tackled his Latin lessons with enthusiasm, the Congregation reconsidered and put him on a 5-6 year track of studies.
When his brother contracted Typhus, Damien took his place on the 1863 mission to Hawaii. After a 148 day voyage, he arrived in Honolulu in March 1864. His bishop in Honolulu oversaw the rest of his studies and he was ordained a priest on May 21st. He departed for the big island in June 1864. His new district of Kohala-Hamakua was awesome in size, roughly 1000 square miles. Consequently he was always traveling, by horse if possible, but often through terrain you could only cross on foot.
He did some farming and was a prodigious builder of chapels. The Protestant leaders regarded the Sacred Heart Fathers as interlopers. As a result, Catholics faced opposition, and at times outright persecution throughout Damien’s tenure. Damien poured himself into learning the Hawaiian language. For a haole, he was unassuming in his habits. He did not stand on ceremony, liked the people, and would sit on the ground and eat their sticky food, unlike the Protestant ministers. Yet he still faced frustrations as many seemed disobedient or unteachable…consequently he too viewed the Hawaiians as children. For a man of such strict personal discipline, he was taken aback at the open sexuality of the natives. He faced great periods of loneliness and “dark thoughts.” He continually compared himself to his elder brother, living the comfortable life in Europe.
In 1873, he traveled to Maui for a church dedication and heard about the need for a mission to the leper colony on Molokai. Damien was one of four young priests who proposed to minister for several weeks at a time. So in May 1873, he departed for Molokai. Unusual for Damien, he heard an “inner voice” tell him he would never return to the big island. His new situation would be exceptional – lonely, difficult, hazardous.
His arrival occurred amidst a larger stirring in the politics of charity to the lepers. The “national blight” was forever in the Honolulu papers and the harshness of segregation laws (isolating lepers from the healthy) sparked gestures of sympathy. The news of his arrival sparked a surge in charitable feeling among the respectable white men in Honolulu. While it received less attention, Damien was not unique at this time. A Mormon elder was there (of course he had the disease), the Protestants had already built a church, and a Protestant deacon (again with the disease) was already at Kalawao. What set the popular imagination off was the belief that Damien was going there permanently. The Protestants of Honolulu were embarrassed by the self-sacrifice and accompanying publicity of this Catholic priest.
Damien did not restrict himself to the leper colony, but ministered in other areas of the island. In order to comply with the segregation laws, the Board decided send a second priest to Molokai who would focus on the healthy districts. Some Fathers believed this a Protestant plot to make Damien’s life intolerable and force him to leave the settlement (it wasn’t). The French Government protested on Damien’s behalf and it relaxed its regulations against doctors and ministers.
The tiny promontory at the base of the cliff was an unlikely place to live: four square miles of land, hard to get to or get away from, cut off from the rest of the island by the Pali (cliff) and ringed to seaward by a rocky shore with rough landing places. It was a natural prison. The hospital was in the lee of a cliff giving it late sunrises and early sunsets, making it frequently cold when wet winter winds blew in off the open ocean. The government believed the area capable of good farming, making it self-sufficient. They grossly overestimated the willingness of the lepers to work once exiled here. Even if it had to be sustained out of the Treasury, the Board expected the population would die out in several years (In fact, it lasted for half a century as a steady stream of new victims replaced the dying).
The colony was a brutal place, with the strong abusing the weak. Disease was killing off the Hawaiian people: cholera, smallpox, influenza, measles, venereal disease, and leprosy scythed down the natives. For some reason, leprosy largely left the white population alone. As leprosy became endemic, the segregation laws went into effect leading to a steady population of 500-1000 at Kalawao. The kanaka often considered segregation worse than the disease itself and hid infected relatives.
When protestant missionaries came to preach, they did so from an elevated distance (perfectly logical from a medical point of view) but from a spiritual outreach point of view it cast the lepers as unwanted untouchables. Hawaiians placed great emphasis on physical touch. To be a genuine kokua, the haole preachers would have to reach across race and disease and touch the leprous Hawaiians. Damien was the only healthy white man willing to do this.
His was a priesthood of worms, of ghastly sights, suffocating smells, and physical and spiritual misery. Most people who visited once had nightmares after viewing something like a young woman whose right side was nothing but thousands of worms among bare ribs or exposed intestines. He smoked his pipe heavily to help overcome the obnoxious stench of the diseased. His church quickly became too small for the growing crowds attending mass.
He periodically served as both priest and governor. Damien was exhausted and needed help. But when another priest named Burgerman arrived, they clashed over everything. No priest was perfect and to the bishops Damien left a lot to be desired. Alone and with limited communications, he tended to do things his own way. He was too quick to make demands and once supplies received used how he thought best.
In 1881, the King’s sister Liliuokalani visited Kalawao. She made Damien a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalakaua. When the French Father Albert Montiton arrived at Kalawao, he all but accused Damien of sexual immorality based off Honolulu hearsay. Another rocky start between priests. After 10 years of sacrifice, Montiton’s invasion led to disagreements about everything. The man who tolerated everything, could no longer tolerate this man and all but issued an ultimatum, him or me. 1882 ended without a decision.
By 1880, over half of the 800 leprosy victims were Catholics. The Board of Health relied on Damien to run the administration of the settlement. In addition to the hospital, there was a small store, a slaughterhouse, road and water pipe construction, blasting of rocks for better boat access, and coffins to be made and graves to dig. Damien did all these things. Leprosy doesn’t discriminate and attacks children equally. The unscrupulous turned the children into slaves or child prostitutes. So Damien got permission from the Board to take the orphans and built dormitories to house, protect, and teach them.
Surrounded by suffering, Damien was coming to terms with his own understanding of life and death. His meditation on death led to superabundant exertion and endurance. However high the government funds rose, they couldn’t keep up with the disease. The 800 lepers constituted roughly 2% of the native Hawaiian population. The political situation was precarious. Walter Gibson (the King’s Minister of everything) ran the Board of Health, but relied on the Protestant plantation owners to fund his government. The Sacred Heart mission had to tread carefully not to offend the Protestant majority.
The disease persisted remorselessly. The rigorous enforcement of the segregation law under King Lunalilo in 1873 intended to halt the spread showed no end in sight. The islands remained full of leprosy through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Rumors and theories that leprosy was a late stage of syphilis spread like wildfire, giving the Protestant haole population more fuel for self-righteousness and belief that Hawaiians were bringing this plague on themselves through their licentiousness. For a while Damien himself held to this view.
By 1884, Damien was officially diagnosed with the disease. Fathers Archambaux and Montiton had both come and gone quickly, once again leaving Damien without a companion and confessor. Their departure doubled Damien’s work at a time when a 5 minute walk fatigued him. In 1885, Damien asked to visit Kakaako hospital in Honolulu but was forbidden to. After some time, he did go and was even visited by King Kalakaua there. One reason for his visit was to try the new Goto treatment method from Japan. He was enthusiastic at first, introducing the treatment back at Kalawao, including lofty ideas for a whole “Goto complex.” For the first time in his life, he was learning the art of politics and public relations. Damien appeared to improve at first, but another priest concluded the treatment was actually making him worse.
Damien’s leprosy became public knowledge in the US and Europe in 1886. The Bishop and Board were flooded with letters offering to move to Kalawao and help. However, the one person who actually went wrote no letters and simply appeared in Honolulu offering to go. Barnes Dutton, a Civil War Union veteran converted to Catholicism and sought penance after a bad divorce and alcoholism. Though not ordained, he proved a capable companion and helper.
The Protestant Reverend Hugh Chapman of London also was impressed with Damien and began raising money for Kalawao. Over the next three years, he began sending sums that exceeded those of the Board of Health. Damien’s sacrificial hero story merited a villain (or villains). The “dreadful delinquencies” of the Hawaiian government, the Board of Health, and Bishops were painted with that brush by public opinion. This embarrassing charity from foreigners made leprosy political again, threatening to undermine the delicate alliance between the government, Board, and Sacred Hearts. This happened at the worst possible time as the government was facing huge national debt and the scandals in the palace involving bribes and monopoly contracts. This would lead to the fall of Gibson, the Catholic’s only friend in power.
Bishop Koeckmann believed the Damien had become an embarrassment to the mission and the government. While almost universally praised elsewhere, his Catholic superiors now viewed him as an incorrigible troublemaker. Damien was taken aback by both the publicity and the attacks on him for unwittingly generating it. Koeckemann believed Damien was too demanding (he did have other missions besides Kalawao) and that he had exaggerated the leper’s misery in letters sent to the four winds. In reality, Damien sent all his letters through Honolulu, unsealed so they could be read first and in reality, no more than a handful were ever published during his lifetime. To be plain Bishop Koeckemann and Father Fouesnel were out of their depth.
While all this was going on, haole militiamen had paraded enough to force a new Constitution and Cabinet on Kalakaua and remove Walter Gibson from the government. The revolution of 1887 meant personnel changes to the Board of Health and tightening of the segregation laws. Fathers Archambaux and Burgerman were both lepers but allowed to continue living in Lahaina on Maui. With the change at the Board, Archambaux was returned to Kalawao, but because of his asthma did not stay long and escaped to Kakaako hospital in Honolulu. The tougher enforcement of the segregation laws sent freshly diagnosed patients to Kalawao by the shipload.
As Damien’s health deteriorated, he became calm and permanently gloomy. Damien was occasionally troubled by the delusion of his being unworthy of heaven. By 1888, the settlement was bigger than ever (above a 1000 patients and over 374 buildings). As the settlement grew, his cares grew, till his activities became endless, a kind of priestly perpetual motion. His orphanage remained close to his heart with more than a 100 boys and girls. By 1887, he had added two eating halls to the existing dormitories. He desired Sisters to come help run them. When rumors of Episcopalian Englishwomen were coming, Damien’s superiors were furious and felt he was forcing their hand to send good Catholic Sisters into an earthly hell. This was hardly true, some of the Catholic nuns wanted to go and did eventually in 1888.
His superiors criticized his independence and used his inability to get along with Burgerman, Montiton, and Archambaux as examples (but failed to note that few people ever got along with those three). The truth is Koeckemann had willing volunteers and could easily have extricated himself from under this criticism by sending Damien help but never did. Over the years spent at Kalawao, Damien was alone more than half the time. With no help from the Sacred Hearts, Damien agitated for a confessor from outside. When Father Conrardy (another Belgian) came, Koeckemann was mortified by the positive press for the new “hero of Kalawao.” Conrardy’s letters found their way into the press, once again embarrassing the government for their lack of support.
When Franciscan Sisters were sent to Kalawao in 1888, the Bishop believed Damien (a leper) and Conrardy (an outsider) were not suitable to serve as their chaplain. So after years of begging for another full time priest, the Bishop finally sent one, but only for the Sisters, not to aid Damien. In his last year of life, and suffering from the full effects of the disease (puffy face, broken skin, swollen eyes, horse voice, etc), Damien continued to be in the thick of the work rebuilding the church which had collapsed after a bad storm.
In early 1889, he took a turn for the worse with painful eruptions on his skin and violent diarrhea and coughing. By March 23rd he was bedridden. He was administered extreme unction on April 2nd. He died on April 15, 1889. Damien never sought fame and sought to live unknown to the world. After his death, his brother Pamphile felt released from any vow of silence on his behalf and published his letters. Within the mission there was a strong desire to remove Damien’s chosen successor Father Conrardy. Protesting to the last, Conrardy left Molokai in 1895. The mission called Pamphile in his place. From the moment he arrived, he felt useless as a substitute for his brother. Pamphile was a quiet, retiring man who was a linguist and a scholar, not the rough-and-ready worker his brother was. He wanted desperately to return to Louvain and was finally give permission a little more than a year after his arrival.
Damien’s death led to broad public support to continue funding Kalawao (notable backers of this included the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baron de Rothschild, and the Prince of Wales). England also poured money into researching the disease, but as it became clear it was not incredibly contagious and Britain was not threatened (by leprosy from India), the funding dried up. Efforts to install and dedicate a monument of Damien would be postponed for at least two years as Hawaii sugar plantations began to struggle based of changing tariff laws in the US.
Hawaiians were abandoning Protestantism, right as Charles Hyde and the Protestant-Americans were politically ascendant in Hawaii. Unwilling or unable to return to their native religious traditions, gravitated toward Catholicism or Mormonism. Damien’s example was a reproach to respectable, Honolulu Protestants, so Hyde proposed to expunge the criticism by pointing to Damien’s leprosy (i.e. trying hard to associate the dirty disease contracted through licentious behavior). However, as eye witness accounts, records, and history would bear out, there was no case to be made here. Damien had his faults and character flaws but in this are he was above reproach. Hyde did not emerge from this business well. By attacking Damien, he himself had become something of a leper in society himself.
In the years since his death, life at the settlement went on but the center of activity shifted from Kalawao to Kalaupapa a few miles away. By the 1920s, the rigorous enforcement of segregation laws seemed to work and the leprosy epidemic was ending. By the 1940s, new drugs were proving effective at treating the disease.
His superiors in Honolulu were reluctant to initiate any examination of Damien for sainthood. His celebrity had been nothing but a vexation and his posthumous publicity was equally baneful. The Sacred Hearts Father General pressed the issue (their small congregation had produced no saints). They half-heartedly investigated and produced a muted report. The process of beatification would have to wait until all who knew him died. In 1936 his remains were exhumed and returned to Louvain. In 1938 beatification proceedings began. In 1959 upon becoming a state, his statue joined that of Kamehameha in the US capitol.
This was published in 1973. Damien was beatified in 1995 and canonized in 2009.
September 17, 2017
This is perhaps the best book on Father Damien of Molokai I can find. It is deep, heavily researched, focused on history and not hagiography, but brings justice and fairness to Fr. Damien's name. I intend to re-read this every year as long as I am able.
September 15, 2016
A truly incredible book about a truly incredible man! If I ever held Father Damien in high esteem, that esteem has only been increased by the reading of this book.
"Holy Man" is a most appropriate title, for it shows Father Damien's total and complete dedication of himself - first to God, then to his fellow man.
What I never knew about him was that he faced such great opposition from many, many people who really should have been supporting him and his great cause on behalf of Hawaii's leper colony, Kalawao. But that's the pettiness of mankind for you; always bickering, always envious, always positioning themselves.
Father Damien lived his life for his flock at the leper colony with a strong singleness of purpose. Eventually contracting leprosy himself, he died at Kalawao and was buried in the local cemetery. It was only after his death, as long as ten years after, that the full realization of the greatness of this man came to be known. He did so much to bring to the attention of the world, the suffering and misery of so many of Hawaii's citizens. In so doing, he also brought attention to all the lepers of the world.
As of this date, Father Damien is my favorite among all the Saints.
"Holy Man" is a most appropriate title, for it shows Father Damien's total and complete dedication of himself - first to God, then to his fellow man.
What I never knew about him was that he faced such great opposition from many, many people who really should have been supporting him and his great cause on behalf of Hawaii's leper colony, Kalawao. But that's the pettiness of mankind for you; always bickering, always envious, always positioning themselves.
Father Damien lived his life for his flock at the leper colony with a strong singleness of purpose. Eventually contracting leprosy himself, he died at Kalawao and was buried in the local cemetery. It was only after his death, as long as ten years after, that the full realization of the greatness of this man came to be known. He did so much to bring to the attention of the world, the suffering and misery of so many of Hawaii's citizens. In so doing, he also brought attention to all the lepers of the world.
As of this date, Father Damien is my favorite among all the Saints.
October 26, 2024
A secular biography of St. Damien, this book takes a thorough look at his life and its historical context with a myriad of primary sources and beautiful prose. Damien is presented in all of his charity and all of his flaws, and his likeness is “sculpted” by the book.
It is incredible what Damien had to endure as a missionary, from bearing patiently with superiors and confreres who seemed to hate him and many oppressive, prominent American protestants on the Hawaiian islands, to the struggles of evangelizing to a new culture and the demanding efforts that it took, finally to the throes of leprosy.
My only criticism of this book is that, having been written from a secular standpoint, while it does show a tremendous appreciation for Damien, it also makes weird, postmodern “anthropological” comments about Christian missionaries in Hawaii disrespecting the immoral parts of traditional Hawaiian society, namely rampant sexual indecency.
It is incredible what Damien had to endure as a missionary, from bearing patiently with superiors and confreres who seemed to hate him and many oppressive, prominent American protestants on the Hawaiian islands, to the struggles of evangelizing to a new culture and the demanding efforts that it took, finally to the throes of leprosy.
My only criticism of this book is that, having been written from a secular standpoint, while it does show a tremendous appreciation for Damien, it also makes weird, postmodern “anthropological” comments about Christian missionaries in Hawaii disrespecting the immoral parts of traditional Hawaiian society, namely rampant sexual indecency.
December 31, 2008
This book isn't the best written...but I found the subject matter fascinating. If you are able to read between the lines and engage in some serious pondering you can get more from the book. Much of Father Damien's life and thoughts were private/limited or encasulated within communications related to his religious lifestyle... you can't help but wonder about the full complexities of his real day to life...this book does help you wonder, but it cannot give the satisfaction available from more modern biographies where the author's have more research material available.
It's not really the author's fault...letters from a priest and accounts from people he knew are simply not enough to give the heart of soul of this man's life and death. For me the key to getting the most of the book was applying the information I learned and thinking about what it meant in real life.
I found the book a very interesting diachotomy of limits and constraints framed by Damien's religious experiences and utter despair and darkness of human misery.They say a picture speaks a thousand words.....and indeed the portraits and photos speak volumes. They say eyes are windows to the soul, the many many eyes in this book help to shatter the constraints and limits set by the religious framework of Damien's work and experience.
It's not really the author's fault...letters from a priest and accounts from people he knew are simply not enough to give the heart of soul of this man's life and death. For me the key to getting the most of the book was applying the information I learned and thinking about what it meant in real life.
I found the book a very interesting diachotomy of limits and constraints framed by Damien's religious experiences and utter despair and darkness of human misery.They say a picture speaks a thousand words.....and indeed the portraits and photos speak volumes. They say eyes are windows to the soul, the many many eyes in this book help to shatter the constraints and limits set by the religious framework of Damien's work and experience.
April 5, 2020
Saint or sinner? Daws gives a pretty much even-handed rendering of Father Damien in this book. While Damien is certainly a model of self-sacrifice, he was not a perfect human being, and both his assets and liabilities are on display here. The church hierarchy seems to have been as much a problem for his as the government, as he tried his best to minister to the sick on Molokai. An intriguing book to read during a pandemic, and one from which we can learn.
June 13, 2021
This is well-written, as one expects from Daws, but the perspective is heavy on church politics and very light on Damien’s works. The regional political/government influence is discussed, but assumes significant background familiarity- I think this would be frustrating if the reader lacked that background. I was expecting a comprehensive biography of the man; his early life was reasonably covered, but I found the account of his years on Molokai wholly unsatisfying.
January 16, 2023
An insightful and balanced biography of an obedient man of God. It’s only lacking in the more personal stories of interactions with Kalawao’s inhabitants. But I did learn a lot about the political machinations of late 19th century Hawaii and how Father Damien fit into all of that in his monotonous work at the leper colony of Molokai
May 10, 2019
The best biography of St Damien to date
March 24, 2020
Marvelous bio of Father Damien, the history of Hawaii of the 1800''s, and the struggles to discovery the cause and cure of leprosy.
August 28, 2020
Incredible biography. Very impactful. He was not a sugar-coated saint, he had genuine human weaknesses, conflicts with his superiors, and still God worked through him powerfully.
November 3, 2023
Good! Takes the occasional potshots at Protestants but good otherwise.
October 15, 2009
Makings of a saint. Controversial socioeconomic, political realities of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the mid-to-late 1880's of what Damien as a Catholic missionary was challenged against. Heroic feats and worldwide recognition he accomplished as a priest helping the lepers. His admirers included royalty and celebrities from all around the world, and they were very generous with gifts and donations.
It took 120 yrs for Fr Damien to be canonized as Saint Damien, but the issue actually came up upon his death in 1889 as being proposed from Europe and America.
It was astounding to witness this "Live" in Rome on OCT 10 & 11, and to read that on Nov 1, 2009 an official, first-class Relic of Saint Damien will be placed at the Cathedral Church in Honolulu.
It took 120 yrs for Fr Damien to be canonized as Saint Damien, but the issue actually came up upon his death in 1889 as being proposed from Europe and America.
It was astounding to witness this "Live" in Rome on OCT 10 & 11, and to read that on Nov 1, 2009 an official, first-class Relic of Saint Damien will be placed at the Cathedral Church in Honolulu.
September 19, 2009
well researched and written, can be a little dry and scholarly for a casual reader...lacks the excitement of John Tayman's book. But i recommend if you want to know more about Damien, his origins, and what brought him to Kalaupapa and Kalawao to care for leprosy patients.
February 28, 2012
Excellent book on a 19th century priest who reached sainthood in the 20th century for serving victims of the Hansens's disease on the island of Molokai. Not a happy book but very interesting. A life dedicated to the ostracized and sick.........
March 1, 2010
fascinating history re: the leper colony on Molokai island in Hawaii, would appeal to those interested in public health and colonialism
October 12, 2013
Pretty dry
October 9, 2014
Another wonderful book about this blessed, godly man and his work with the lepers... His was the first bio of a Saint that I'd read as a child, and as an adult, I can't read enough about him.
March 21, 2016
Beautifully written account of the lepers of Molokai.
September 13, 2015
May make you want to read biographies... this is a good one for physicians to read!
January 26, 2016
Read it many years ago
April 25, 2017
Il est tout à fait envisagable que dans ce livre on voit un des premiers portait des personnes atteintes du syndrome Asperger, qui a fait la singularité du personnage en tant aussi bien prêtre et missionnaire que personne difficile à vivre et vivre avec. Il est certain que à notre époque père Damien aurait probablement été un illuminé ou pire encore un SDF, car les structures sociales contemporaines repoussent tout ce qui peut les atteindre avec une force inouïe pour une personne de 19ième.siécle. Finalement on devient de plus en plus tolérants déclarativement et de plus en plus conformiste dans les faits.
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