Father Damien de Veuster as a young priest in an undated photo. (HCH file photo)
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
“I was first placed in the district close to the big volcano, this ancient divinity of our Kanakas who to our day still has his adorers.”
St. Damien wrote those words in 1865 in a letter to France describing his first missionary deployment (and incorrectly identifying the volcano diety as a male). The quote comes from the book “Father Damien’s Letters” published in 2017 in Rome by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts.
Most people identify St. Damien with the Hawaiian island of Molokai where he spent 16 years of his life serving the victims of Hansen’s disease abandoned on the Kalaupapa peninsula.
But after his ordination in Honolulu’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on May 21, 1864, his first mission was the Big Island, specifically the area now in the global spotlight for its dramatic residential volcanic eruption — Puna.
In this correspondence to his superior general, Sacred Hearts Father Euthyme Rouchouze, his novice master, Father Caprais Verhaege, and his brother Father Pamphile de Veuster, Father Damien continues his description of the volcano:
“There is nothing more curious to see than the continual action of this fire of intense heat before which everything melts, even the highest mountains. Therefore, when it is in action all our islanders have a terrible fear and many of them hasten to offer whatever sacrifices to appease his anger. I myself have been an eyewitness of this kind of an act of idolatry one day that I descended into the interior of the volcano to see this frightening fire closer up.”
In another letter to Father Rouchouze, Father Damien provided additional detail to his anecdote about witnessing “a poor Kanaka” making a sacrifice “to this ancient divinity.”
“… finding myself alongside him on the edge of the volcanic fire,” he wrote. “I took advantage of the situation to speak with him about hell etc.”
At the time of Father Damien’s ordination, Hawaii’s Catholic mission assigned priests to each of the Big Island’s traditional land divisions — Kau, Kona, Kohala, Hilo and Puna.
Puna covers approximately 500 square miles. By comparison, Oahu is 597 square miles.
In a letter to his superior general dated Nov. 1, 1864, he wrote, “It is always on volcanic lava that I walk.”
When Father Damien arrived in Puna, he district had been seven or eight years without a resident priest. Because of that, he said, both the people’s faith and the few small mission churches built to sustain it were suffering from inattention.
He described his work in a letter to his parents dated March 1865.
“Our bishop entrusted me to a new parish, which is a bit bigger than the parish of Tremolo (his home town). I need a good month to travel the whole of it. We cannot travel here by railroad, nor by carriage nor on foot. How then to make these long journeys? We have both mules and horses. I bought two of them. For 100 francs, I bought a beautiful horse and a mule for 75 francs with the result that I can journey as much as I wish. At times, I am obliged to travel by sea in a small boat.
“Our poor islanders deem themselves happy when they see Damiano arriving and for my part I love them very much. I would willingly give my life for them like our divine Savior as I do not spare myself when it has to do with going to visit the sick a distance of 7 or 8 leagues (a league being roughly three miles). There was a great earthquake here this year but that happens often.”
As it turned out, Father Damien would stay in Puna for less than a year.
On March 19, 1865, Damien exchanged places with Sacred Hearts Father Clement Evrard, who had been ordained with him in the Honolulu cathedral and whose first assignment was the rugged northern Big Island district of Kohala.
Father Clement, “weak of constitution, was not able to handle the climate and the great fatigue of the district, which was first given to him,” Father Damien explained to his superior. So, with the bishop’s consent, the more robust and athletic former farmer went to Kohala and worked there for eight years before accepting the assignment that would change history.
