St. Damien’s birth home in Tremelo, Belgium, underwent a monthslong restoration that included the addition of a permanent exhibit and a touchscreen journey of his life. (Courtesy Ruben Boon / Damien Museum)
Hawaii Catholic Herald
St. Damien’s Belgian birth home is now open to the general public after months of restoration.
Ruben Boon, curator of the Damien Museum in Tremelo, said in an email bulletin that the work took about nine months. The restoration included the installation of a permanent exhibit featuring “original furniture and interior elements, Damien’s original coffin, Damien’s chasuble, Damien’s chalice and mission cross” and more, he wrote.
A touchscreen features St. Damien’s journey from Belgium to Kalaupapa, including the places in Europe and Hawaii where he lived and worked.
St. Damien was born Jozef de Veuster in Tremelo in 1840. He entered the novitiate for the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1859 — taking the name Damien — and arrived in Hawaii in place of his ill brother in 1864.
He was ordained a priest at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu that year, and spent nearly a decade on Hawaii island before going to Molokai to minister to leprosy patients on the remote Kalaupapa peninsula.
Father Damien remained on the peninsula, eventually developing leprosy (now called Hansen’s disease) himself in 1886 and dying three years later. He was beatified in 1995 and canonized in 2009.
For more information about the Damien Museum, visit its website at www.damiaan.be/en.