By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
On May 10 the Diocese of Honolulu will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the day St. Damien de Veuster first set foot on Molokai and began a ministry of supreme charity and selflessness that would lead to his death there 16 years later and his canonization.
May 10 is also his feast day, a designation that required a special concession from Rome.
With beatification and canonization comes the honor of placement on the church’s liturgical calendar as an optional or obligatory “memorial,” or feast, with special Mass prayers and readings chosen for that day’s saint.
A saint’s liturgical feast day is usually the date the saint dies, that is, enters into eternal life.
But Father Damien died on April 15, a day that commonly falls during Lent, a season during which the church does not celebrate optional and obligatory memorials, essentially resulting in a feast in name only.
When St. Damien’s 1995 beatification made him eligible for a spot on the liturgical calendar as an “optional memorial,” the May 10 date was desired to avoid the Lenten conflict.
In November 1999, Honolulu Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo asked the U.S. bishops to place Father Damien’s feast on the American Catholic calendar on May 10 as an “optional memorial.” The bishops voted overwhelmingly in favor of the request and the decision was sent to Rome for final authorization.
On Dec. 20, 1999, the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments approved the U.S. bishops’ decision to create an optional memorial, but changed the date back to April 15.
So on April 4 the following year, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote back to the Vatican asking that the observance be changed to May 10 as originally requested.
A year later, in a letter dated April 24, 2001, the congregation gave its consent.
Fourteen days after St. Damien’s canonization on Oct. 11, 2009, another Vatican decree, this one made at the request of Bishop Larry Silva, elevated the feast from an “optional” memorial to an “obligatory” memorial in Hawaii.
That means that all Masses celebrated in Hawaii on May 10 — unless it falls on a Sunday — must be for St. Damien.
Molokai was not St. Damien’s first priestly assignment. After his ordination in Honolulu in 1864, he served on the Big Island — one year in Puna and eight years in Kohala.
While in Kohala he had a premonition that he might end up on Molokai. In April 1873, he wrote his superior in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, “Many of our Christians here at Kohala also had to go to Molokai (as leprosy patients). I can only attribute to God an undeniable feeling that soon I shall join them.”
A month later he was there. Father Damien arrived at the leprosy settlement from Maui, where Bishop Louis Maigret and priests of the Hawaii mission had celebrated on May 3 the dedication of the new St. Anthony Church in Wailuku.
Accompanied by the bishop, on May 10, Father Damien stepped off the ship Kilauea onto Kalaupapa at around 11 a.m. It was a Saturday.
Bishop Maigret describes the event in his journal: “(We) visit the leprosarium (hospital) at Kalawao — enter the humble chapel recently erected by Br. Bertram — our poor neophytes come out in impressive enough numbers — I speak a few words to them — They seem happy to see us — Fr. Damien will remain some two weeks among them — a petition bearing 200 signatures is presented to us (me) they are asking that a priest remain permanently among them, but where is one to be found …”
The “two weeks” referred to an agreement the bishop had made with four priests who would rotate the Kalaupapa assignment. Father Damien was the first.
However, a short time later, Father Damien wrote his bishop, volunteering to stay permanently. “I am willing to devote my life to the leprosy victims. It is absolutely necessary for a priest to remain here. The harvest is ripe.”
Father Damien remained with his new flock 16 years, caring for them until his death from Hansen’s disease in 1889.
Celebrating May 10
- Prayer service: Catholic schools, 9 a.m., Damien statue, state capitol
- Mass: Bishop Larry Silva, 8:15 a.m., St. Anthony Church and School, Wailuku, where St. Damien received his Molokai assignment
- Mass: Bishop Larry Silva, 6 p.m., Memorial of St. Damien, Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace
